Sadiq Khan: Why Are Police Officers Attacking Women? How Safe Are We REALLY?
Guests: Sadiq Khan
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
Let's be frank. Donald Trump was obsessed with me. If the mayor of London wasn't somebody of my background, my faith, he wouldn't have responded the way he did, would he? Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is the first Muslim mayor. Has made some powerful opponents. The new image of Britain's multicultural society. The mayor is with us. Do you think London's safe? Well, we've reduced homicides, knife crime, gun crime. I don't think people feel safe in London.
I'm not excusing it, I'm explaining it. That's the consequences. There's been a lot of instances of police officers who have attacked and raped women and girls on the streets of London. What are you doing about that? We're doing it now. How? I've been criticised for this. Since you were elected mayor, what are the things you look at and go, do you know what, I failed there? Well, that's a good question. But I'm running for re-election in 467 days' time.
I'm not going to answer that question, honestly, because the answer is going to be against me. You can't tell the truth because someone might use it against you? I think most MPs have got to be inauthentic. I tell you why, because... What's been your hardest day as London Mayor? There's been a few. At least 58 people were killed in the fire at Grenfell Tower. I still remember the images. I still remember the heat. One family, six people wiped out.
And a number of terror attacks in London. London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Finsbury Park. I went to a lot of funerals. That summer was hard. Yeah. Sadiq, give me your context. I spent a long time reading through your backstory, and I think it's an especially important place to start because it appears to be much of your reason for being and your reason for doing. So can you take me right back? I want to hear about Pakistan. I want to hear about your earliest years in London.
Sure. So firstly, it's a pleasure to be on this, Stephen. Can I just say two things before we start? It's not me being a sycophant and please don't think I'm being patronising. But firstly, I think you realise that you're a massive role model to so many Londoners and there are people that you will never meet. who you've had an impact on. And so thank you firstly for that. And I meet people that you don't meet who, when I say who's your own models, and I pray you in aid to give examples of the hard work you do.
So thank you for that. But secondly, congratulations. It's always lovely to meet somebody who's incredibly successful, who's normal. So my family's story is quite complicated. my grandparents and great grandparents were in India, both on my mum's side and my dad's side. And the story of India is India was part of the British Empire. And the short version of the long story is in 1947, the British decided to give up India and partition India. I don't want to go into divide and rule and stuff, but there'd been sectarian violence now between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, and a Muslim in India wasn't safe.
just like a Sikh and Hindu, generally speaking in West Pakistan and New Pakistan, weren't safe. Why? Because these countries were going to be ostensibly Muslim and the middle India, ostensibly Hindu and Sikh. So my grandparents and great-grandparents left everything behind, everything behind. So my parents had experienced being immigrants once already, right, from India to Pakistan. And they had a comfortable life in Pakistan, middle class, up middle class, and...
my dad decided he was in the Pakistani Air Force. He went first to Australia and... If any Australians watching this, this is no aspersion on your country. It's a great country, right? He didn't really like Australia. And so when he went back to Pakistan, he didn't want to go to Australia to live. And he came to London and he made London his home. And this is a London which yes, when he first came, there were signs saying, you know, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs by blacks, anybody who wasn't white.
And when I compare my mum and dad who travelled, you know, three, four thousand miles, learnt a new language, learnt a new culture, raised a family. I was born in Tootin, in St George's Hospital. I first lived a mile up the road in the Henry Prince Estate, on a council estate. My parents moved a mile the other way after so my dad managed to save a deposit for a house. And I now live a mile and a half from where I was born. So I've literally gone up a mile radius, right, from where I was born.
My grandparents and my parents had this huge strife and travelled all this way. So I'll be the first to come in in three generations, and not to be a migrant, because I'm staying here. That whole experience, growing up in a house of 10 people, eight siblings in total, in a council house? Flat, yeah. Council flat. The immigrant story you've told there, watching your parents struggle to provide for all of you, what imprint has that left on you when you look back and go, that's why I am the way that I am?
I'm really trying to get at the real defining attributes, the things that make Sadiq different from the average person on the street. the work ethic, the, you know, and with that, I also want to know, you know, one of my guests on this podcast that was the coach for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant said that we all have a dark side and much of our dark side is, can be attributed to the thing that makes us quote unquote great. You've seen The Last Dance?
Yeah. Oh God. It's one of my favorite films upstairs in the wall. Yeah. So, so, um, So I think you tend to mirror, emulate, and be like those you're around. You copy their mannerisms, their behaviors and so forth. And I was raised in a family where we felt incredibly privileged. My mum and dad both made sure we understood that this privilege meant we had a responsibility to, you know, listen to your teachers at school, to work hard and, you know, to, you know, not be a shirker basically.
And so, you know, all of us, not just had a really good work ethic, still do. All of us also, it's interesting, I just think about this the other night, have given something back whether it's coaching in boxing or whether it's you know volunteering at a swimming club whether it's you know politics or whatever because that came from our parents what we saw in relation and also what we saw was going on the estate and what our friends were doing and stuff and you know And the interesting thing about our estate was everyone worked.
All the dads worked. Most of the moms had a job and, you know, there was a work ethic and a sense of community. I'm not pretending it was brilliant, you know, roasting your glasses and stuff. But yeah, so, you know, my wife often, you know, jokes that, you know, I can't sit around doing nothing. I've always got to be doing something because I always saw my dad doing something. Even if it meant on the odd day he'd have off, he'd take us to museums, take us to galleries, go out on a tour of London, go to Hyde Park.
So there was no... time for doing nothing. And so it's really, and so it's hard for me to actually spend downtime, go to the theater and just do leisure or, you know, read a book for, for the sake of reading a book and stuff. Cause you know, there we go goes. I saw that throughout your story. And I heard it from some of your colleagues as well that, and I also heard you say, in fact, in one interview where you said that you work seven days a week.
That's not very healthy, is it? Yes and no. So I'm very lucky. I'm privileged. I'm the mayor of London. I did a meeting last week with my staff, my main, my sort of top staff. And I said to them last week, listen, I've got to reply for my job at the next election. In this term, we have 475 days left. That's now down to 467 days left at the time we're recording this. We've got to work on the basis that there is a possibility, I'll try my best, but it doesn't happen.
There's a possibility I will not be re-elected. When I reply for my job, Londoners will say no. We've got to use every single day we have left, every hour we have left, to make sure we maximize delivering for our city, to make it safer, to make it green, to make it more prosperous. You can't afford to waste this time. It's a privilege. It's a privilege to be running. What about you, though, and your family and all the other things that make life, you know, worth living?
It's not just work, right? Yeah, but some of the stuff I do is work without being work. I'll give you an example. So I might go and support a theatre production. My support is going along to watch it and they can then amplify it. I've been there, right? But it's a great night out for my wife and I, or I might do something with my daughters and stuff. You know, but I recognise that my wife and daughters and my mum and my brothers and sisters and my in-laws have made sacrifices by me doing my job.
You know, and I'm cognisant of that and I'm grateful for that. You can't do the job that I'm doing without the support of your family. By the way, You can also do this job. I work three days a week. The previous guy did that. You can do that, right? But he may not have felt privileged to do the job. I think it's a privilege. And I remember when I was in government, and I remember in 2010, the last year I sat around the cabinet with Gordon Brown and the team.
And I think there were some incredibly talented people around that cabinet in the prime of their game some incredibly talented special advisors in the prime of their game. We lost at the general election and their peak years were... They're not in government. They're not advising the government. Had I known in 2005 when I first became an MP and had Tony and Gordon sat down with 300 plus MPs and said, listen, we've got to maximize these five years between 2005, 2010, I think things may have been different because we'd have realized it's a privilege we've got to use every day we have.
And so I'm not criticizing Tony and Gordon, but I'm saying, you don't know how long you've got your job, right? And so my view is you make the most of it. There's time to rest later on. That's also not guaranteed though, right? Well, you know. In terms of life generally. Yeah, but you know, I love my job. I've been lucky to have three big jobs. I was a lawyer for 11 years. Loved it. Loved being a lawyer. I was a parliamentarian and a minister for 11 years.
Loved it. And I'm now the mayor. I've been the mayor for the last six and a half years. And so if you're lucky enough, to have a job you love and your family is supportive. You've got to have a supportive family. My wife is so supportive. She's not just an incredible cheerleader. She gives me good advice. She pulls me up, you know, when I bring the arrogance home or I have delusions of grandeur. You know, she makes sure I put the bins out. She makes sure that I'm doing my bit of her, cleaning up and stuff.
You need that at home. That sort of, you need that sense of normality at home. My daughters, geez. I mean, you know, there's no is or graces in my house. They're both back home now to finish university. They're both working. And so they're supportive. They support what I'm doing. They know I'm here. If I spoke to your wife and I said to her, I said, what are you, what annoys you about Sadiq? Because I could tell you what my girlfriend would say.
She'd say, Steven, it's just an hour and a half. How long have you got? And it's a long list. I'm sure there's a long list of stuff. I mean, I think. Because people don't get to see that, the impact that being a politician has on the family at home. Now, this is one of the things I'm super interested in with all my guests is how that then impacts all the people we don't get to see. Yeah, yeah. That's right. So what I did at early stage was I involved my office.
So my team in my office, a lot of them are now my best friends. I've worked with them so long. they know my, they know Saadia and they know the kids. So simple things, you know, my team will send Saadia my diary for the week in advance. So Saadia does what I'm doing. The nights I'm out, the nights I'm in, which things she'll be coming along to. And so the family's involved in that. At home we have, you know, on the fridge, so it tells us who's at home for walking Luna and so forth.
It only works when you share what you're doing and stuff. My wife's got her own, she's got two jobs herself. So it only works if everyone's on the same page. It does not work. And a lot of my friends in politics, marriage breakups, a lot of my friends in the law, marriage breakups, all those sorts of problems and stuff. So you've got to have not just somebody who is supportive of you doing it, but is an active player and you're doing it. And you've got to make sure that parts of your work life are sharing with your home life.
There's a couple of conditions we have at home. What is the biggest friction though? That's the question I asked. So, I mean, we don't have much friction at home. I mean, work-life balance is an issue. You know, me missing another family event or me not be able to go to distant friends or relations, social event, but we don't really do friction. I'm trying, you know, trying to think that the last time we had, Yeah, it's diary management. So last Saturday, for example, I was doing something for work.
And then I promised to go to a party in Eastbourne, an anniversary party of a friend and, you know, and then do something back in London on Sunday. So managing that with negotiating that with my wife and my daughters was quite a feat. You mentioned you're a lawyer for just more than a decade. I'm always, I'm always, I think the word is skeptical. I said this to Matt Hancock when I spoke to him about like why politicians become politicians. You had a great job, you know, paid a lot of money.
You made the decision to quit that job very abruptly and go into politics and become ultimately a Labour MP. Why? So, the sort of the qualification to that question, you're right by the way, that's all right, is it was the MP for Tutin. Yeah. So, what I wasn't going to do was give up my legal career. And by the way, it wasn't just a great little career, but I had a great future ahead of me because, you know, just the two of us ran the business, very profitable, gone from being, you know, a business we're just employing eight people to more than 50 when I was a But the opportunity came to be the MP for Tutin.
Tutin I was born and raised in, literally. The MP for Tutin, a guy called Tom Cox, had been the MP my entire life. I'd never known any other MP. I'd never been inside the Chamber of Parliament. I didn't know any friends who were MPs. I didn't really know any friends in politics, I don't think. I was a councillor in my spare time, you know, serving the local community. As a lawyer in my spare time, I was in my spare time as chair of Liberty, human rights group, you know, chair of legal action group, a legal aid charity group.
But the opportunity came to be the MP for Tooting. And, you know, I couldn't say no because, you know, it was the chance to represent my community in parliament. And the way I described it at the time, because people were saying to me, what are you doing? Why? It doesn't make sense. was, you know, I was blessed to have a good legal career. And if I won a case for my client, he or she benefited, or if I settled a case, if the case went to one of the higher courts, we'd set a president.
Setting a president means that other people benefit from the president of the case, because you've changed the law. And that's a big deal. And, you know, I was blessed to do that. But when you're in parliament and you're part of the government, you can pass legislation or amend legislation that affects millions of people. So not just people in Tutankhamen, but people across our city and our country. And being the MP for Tutankhamen was why I gave up the legal career.
Not to be an MP for MP's sake, to be the MP for Tutankhamen. Why does that matter to you, helping millions of people? It's public service, right? It's the ability to impact and improve people's lives. I could have, you know, when I left law school, got and worked in the city and, you know, been a city lawyer. But I chose to do the law that I chose to do for a variety of reasons. You know, it's important for me to be... a lawyer practicing, you know, discrimination law, you know, issues around police misconduct, issues around employment law, doing litigation, the sort of cases that I undertook.
What motivated me was this issue of acting on behalf of the underdog, being the advocate for people I grew up with who were routinely, you know, the wrong end of the SUS law, stop and search, people I knew who were unfairly dismissed, people who, you know, I was aware who were being discriminated against, you know, acting for the victims of miscarriages of justice. That was important to me. Why? A number of reasons. My inspiration for being a lawyer is, have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?
No. I wanted to be Atticus Finch, right? We all want to be Atticus Finch. And then when I watched, when I was growing up, this program on TV, you're too young to remember it called LA Law. I wanted to be this lawyer called Fuentes. Jimmy Smith's played this lawyer who was doing these really good cases. But also I remember a number of things happened around that time where I felt helpless. you know, the way my dad was treated in his bus garage, the bus garage was closing down, felt helpless.
We couldn't do anything about it. You know, going to a march is fine, but you need to challenge this in the courts if you could. If you couldn't use the court system, you got to change the laws. You know, seeing friends treated the way they weren't. And I thought it's not wrong, but there's no way of helping, you know, people who need help. And being a lawyer is a noble thing. I know people, I know lawyers get a bad rep, you know, some lawyers do earn a lot of money.
But people who do the law that I was doing, you know, don't earn a lot of money. Some do, and I was very lucky to do well. But it's important to me, public service, to act on behalf of these people. Who acts on behalf of the person who's the receiving of the police misconduct? Who acts on behalf of the person who's, you know, discriminated on the grounds of their race or gender in the workplace? So what I got from that is your dad was... I'm trying to understand the personal reasons why you chose that path, which is like, you know, like we've all chosen our paths for...
for interesting reasons. I think a lot of my path was defined by my own insecurities as a kid. What I've heard there is your, the thing about your dad's bus depot being shut down? Bus garage. Bus garage. And then there was some of your friends in your life had experienced certain types of abuse that were because of their race or, but also mistreatment by the police. That was your like personal motivation. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. So those are my experiences.
My experience growing up was that, you know, actually life isn't always fair and you need somebody to be there to help you. And it's never been about, you know, it sounds, you know. frankly speaking, a bit, you know, wankerish, but it's never been about yourself making money. None of my siblings have, you know, followed a path, which is interesting, actually. None of us have followed paths where it's been about, you know, making money for money's sake.
It's about doing a job we enjoy and trying to give something back where you can, whether it's being a teacher, whether it's being, you know, a coach or whatever. Over the last 10 years, in your own view, which direction do you think London has gone in in terms of safety and in terms of desirability and in terms of world influence over the last, let's say, 10 years? Because I think it's my view that it's probably gone in a negative direction in terms of influence, safety, and I think generally the respect of the capital.
And I think a number of factors have contributed to that. Obviously, the pandemic has been a big one. But then I think generally the knife crime issue and the safety issues. And these are all things influenced by biases, right? Because I was, when I moved to London, I was burgled really badly. 3am in the morning, came in my house, stole everything. We never heard anything back from the police. There was no interest in helping us. But just generally, I've lived in other parts of the world.
Yeah, no, sure, sure. You know, lived in the Middle East, lived in, spent time in Dubai, lived in New York for many, many years. New York's not necessarily safe at all, but other parts of the world seem to be much safer. And it's funny because when I speak to some of my friends who have been successful in business and they talk about why they're leaving the UK, it's one of the top three reasons is always safety. It's always I don't feel safe in London.
Before we had this conversation, I was listening to Amir Khan talk about him being robbed on the high street in London, coming out of a restaurant at gunpoint. You see the footballers, the Arsenal players all being robbed at knife point on mopeds. My girlfriend had her phone snatched out of her hand while walking. And you just think, God, it's not safe to be in London. First is, I'm really sorry about your experience, and I hope I wasn't too distressed.
So if you look at London over the last 10 years, the last 20 years even, if you park Brexit for a second, because we can come back to that in relation to the impact of Brexit on London. London as a global city, you know, I don't want to go to various metrics, but we're doing incredibly well as a global city in relation to foreign direct investment, in relation to the diversity of people coming to London, in relation to, you know, the tourism to London, in relation to retention of talent, in relation to the diversity of our economy.
It's not just financial services, professional services, legal services, life sciences, higher education, culture, tech, so forth. So the underlying strengths are still there and we are doing incredibly well. We punch well above our weight in relation to the rest of the country. Because of how well we're doing, we contribute roughly speaking every year, net to the treasury, 42 billion pounds. And it's been going up over the period of time. So we, as a slice of the national pie, contribute far more than we're supposed to, but be reminded the size of our city.
And that's because we've managed to attract talent and keep talent. That's why I'm here. Yeah. But the reason why I might go is because it's... Well, let me come to the second. And so one of the challenges we've had post-Brexit is to keep that talent here. And we can talk about some of the stuff we've done to keep it. In relation to safety, it is a fact. And I'm really sorry for your experience, genuinely, Stephen, because I meet too many people like you being the victims of crime.
But I'm afraid the bad news is since 2012 and nationally 2013, serious violence has been going up since 2013 across our country, including London. London is not separate from the rest of the country and feeling the impact. Now, without excusing criminality, and I'm not excusing those people who burgled your house, by the way, and I'm not saying this with their motivation, but... But there is a link between, and crime is complex causes, by the way, without excusing it.
You know, and I believe very simply you've got to deal with it in two ways. One is to be tough on crime, more policing, give them the support they need to make sure they deal with the criminals. I call it a public health approach and I come to that to explain what I mean. And tough on the complex causes of crime in relation to dealing with underlying causes, deprivation, poverty, alienation, inequality and so forth. Yeah. You can't escape the fact that since 2010, we've had massive austerity in this country.
So there have been 21,000 fewer police officers across the country in the last 12 years. That is a fact. We've got youth clubs that have closed down, youth centres closed down, after school clubs not taking place, weekly clubs not taking place, unemployment's gone high until very recently and so forth. I'm not excusing it. I'm explaining it. And so, you know, when I became mayor, one of the things I promised Londoners I would do is to be straight with Londoners about the problems in relation to, I was quite clear straight away saying, listen, these cuts have got consequences and we've got to recognise there are consequences.
So I'm going to use the limited powers I have and raise council tax. That's one lever to bring money in and use it to pay for more police officers. And I was criticized for doing so, but I had to do it because of your experience was one I'd heard too many times before. So we've paid for 1,300 more officers. Not enough, but it's all I can do. There's a limit to how much you can raise council tax to it. It's a regressive tax. but also use business rates money to open up youth clubs again, youth centres, employ youth workers, have summer schemes.
We have now 32,000 mentors. We're going to get to 100,000 over the next two, three years. Mentors are crucial in my view. And the good news, I'm not complacent at all, and Mayor Khan's experience was also awful, was the good news is we have bucked the national trend. So across the country, homicides are going up. In London, they're going down. We've reduced homicides, knife crime, gun crime, teenage homicides, burglary since I became mayor. Nowhere near low enough because we've got to invest more in the police and invest more in the causes of crime.
And when I talk about a public health approach, Stephen, what I mean by that is this. Think of crime as you would a public health issue. What would you do? You deal with the infection, you've got to kill the infection, right? More police officers, you know, got to arrest people. You've got to stop the infection spreading. Really important when we stop, you know, the crime spreading. People thinking that you can be successful by being a criminal.
We've got to stop it, deal with the gangs, so forth. But stop the infection occurring in the first place. Stop the crime occurring in the first place. And, you know, it's a source of pride to me. We've not made the progress, but our policies, being tough on crime, invested in the police, and we are reforming the police at the same time. but also investing in young people is leading to the turnaround in London. And we've bucked the national trade in London.
And as a global city, you speak to, as I do regularly, the mayor of New York, the mayor of Chicago, the mayor of LA. Those are our comparators with respect. Do you know what it is? I would just like to feel really safe. When I go to other places, if you go to somewhere in the Middle East or Dubai or whatever it might be, you feel exceptionally safe. You know, so to be honest, I went to Indonesia. I was in Indonesia a couple of weeks ago. I was in Bali.
I said to my girlfriend, I said, you could leave your wallet on the floor here and it would still be there an hour later when you come back. You do that in London. you know, not only have you lost your wallet, you've probably come back, you've lost your shoes or something, you know, like, and I just... There's all sorts of great charity generosity and, you know, Londoners aren't all quite like that, Stephen, to be fair. I don't think they feel safe.
I don't think people feel safe. No, no, and more so if you're a woman or a girl. If you think you don't feel safe, one of the big challenges that we've got is making sure that women and girls feel safe. Is this all solvable in your view? Without a doubt. We saw in the 2000s, you know, between 1997 and, you know, the mid-naughties, huge progress made in reducing crime. And it was dealing with the two things that I said, you've got to be tough on crime, tough on the causes, you'll invest in policing.
but also invest in dealing with the causes of policing. It definitely is solvable. We've made progress in the past. We're making progress in London now. We've got to make sure at the same time, of course, you know, we reform the police, we'll publicise issues in policing. Londoners have got to be the eyes and the ears. There are some amazing citizens in London, who, you know, would return the wallet to you, you know, if you'd lost it or left it around in London, will report something taking place, will come forward if they're a witness of crime, will come forward and support the police that are a victim of crime, will join the police service.
These problems are definitely solvable. We've done it in the past, we're doing it now. And the possibility, you know, in the not distant future of a, you know, changing government and a government that invests in public services, it definitely solvable. One of the points you made there about the infection spreading, I thought was quite compelling. I was reading about the story of, I think it's Haas Rat Wally. The story of an 18 year old guy who was in Twickenham was approached by a 16 year old kid, ended up being stabbed to death with an eight inch knife because he got into an argument with this person.
And when that 16 year old that stabbed him to death was asked, he said he stabbed him because he was, people in his life had been victims of knife crime. He thought he was scared that Hazrat would have a knife himself. That's the infection you're talking about. Yes. Basically what happens is, some young people that I speak to will think the way to be safe is to carry a knife, because they suspect you might be carrying a knife, right? And so we've got to get the message across that, you know, leaving home with a knife doesn't make you more safe, it makes you less safe.
So if you go to a primary school, not a secondary school, a primary school across the country, by the way, and you have a classroom of 30 people and you say, how many of you know somebody carrying the knife? You'll be shocked the number of hands that go up in a primary school. right uh secondary school is even higher and so there is this belief amongst young people that carrying the knife makes you more safe not less safe and by the way i went to a tough secondary school lots of fights nobody even thought about taking a knife to school right or getting involved with knives at all and you know um so we've got to deal with that issue at source right to make sure young people understand the dangers.
§02Transcript — part 2
So we're going to school, speaking to young people, people with credibility. You've got to have somebody who's... The message carrier needs to be somebody who kids respect and will listen to, right? And so getting people to go into schools to explain the dangers. Sometimes it's a bereaved mum. A bereaved mum can be really effective in explaining the story about her son, tends to be boys, about her son and the dangers of carrying the knife. Yeah.
So we're going to stop it at source. We've also got to make sure, frankly speaking, that there's intelligence-led stop and search. Because if you're carrying the knife, I want you to be stopped and searched. And if you've got a knife taken off you, I would make progress in taking knives off people, which is saving lives. Weapon sweeps is really important. But also if you're caught carrying the knife, there's got to be serious sentences. There's got to be a consequence of you carrying that knife.
But, you know, and that's why we've got to have these conversations. That's why it's the public health approach. And it is leading to, You know, huge reductions, you know, over the last year we've had a 55% reduction in teenage homicides. Not enough. One is one too many. You know, a few homicides last year then when I first became mayor. Not enough, but we're making progress because the investment is now starting to pay dividends in relation to youth clubs, youth work, going into schools, more police officers.
There was a big drop in knife crime, wasn't there? Was it 2020, I'm going to say? So the pandemic, we saw a reduction, a number of reasons, obviously, for three months, people, but there was a lockdown and stuff. But that progress, we've carried on. But it started going on before the pandemic. We first started investing in, it's called the Young Londoners Fund in about 2018-19. But it takes some time to get youth workers back employed, youth centres back open, and also young people starting to have these points landed on them.
It's not, there's not, you know, light bulb moment. It's got to take time, spend time with them. That's why mentors are so important. The reason I made the point at the beginning, Stephen, about you as a role model is, you know, I'm a firm believer in you can't, you can't beat if you can't see it, right? I was lucky. I was lucky that I saw at home my mum working really hard, my dad working really hard, my big brother's working really hard. I had role models.
A lot of young people haven't got that role model at home. The youth worker is that role model. A youth worker is an amazing asset to a young person if you've not got the role model at home in relation to a big brother, a friend, somebody you can ring up, somebody give you careers advice. You know, a lot of young people don't know how to put up a tie, right? Don't know how to shave. Can't go for a job interview. Those soft skills we're teaching young people now.
You may think, why are you teaching young people those soft skills? Because they need those soft skills, right? Well, knife crime's up since last year though, isn't it? No, it's gone down. So basically knife crime's gone down since I became mayor. Homicide's gone down. Since last year? No, robbery's gone up a bit. Robbery's gone up a bit for a number of reasons we're dealing with. That's me. Yeah. A robbery's when you're... Yeah. Robbery, sorry, robbery is burdened with violence.
Right. My last question on that topic is, do you think London's safe? Well, I asked that question by your answer. If you don't feel it's safe, it's not safe. Right. And so- Do you feel it's safe? Yeah, I do. Because my comparator isn't with respect to Bali or Dubai. My comparator is New York, Chicago, those cities. Because we are a global city, Stephen. You know, we're not Cheshire. And so, you know, but if it's not safe for you, it's not safe for me.
I speak to too many women and girls. They say it's not safe. I speak to too many women in particular. who say they're imposing a curfew in themselves, not to go out at night time because they don't feel safe. In that case, it's not safe. I speak to too many, you know, people who are worried about their safety. And you know, perception is is important here, because it's fear of crime that you're talking about, because your experience, right? And you'll speak to your friends and not reason me that they'll be apprehensive and scared.
So it's a problem for me, as we've got to address it. David Wright Women and girls, there's been a lot of talk recently about instances of police officers who have attacked, raped women and girls on the streets of London. What are you doing about that to prevent that happening going forward? So in the last few years, there's been, at last, publicity given to the fact that every three days across our country, a woman is killed at the hands of a man every three days.
And that's a sobering fact. Recently we've seen, which is the tragic murders of Sarah Everard, you know, Zahra Alina, you know, Bieber and Nicole, you know, and many others, Sabine and Nessa. But also we've seen people who we entrust to keep us safe. Peace officers, police officers, the people we go to when we're the victims of crime, being involved in the most serious crimes possible. Sarah Everard was abducted by a man using his warrant card, raped and killed by a serving police officer.
We had David Carrick, somebody who'd been a police officer for almost 20 years, we discover throughout most of his 20 years, had been a prolific sexual offender, using the fact that he's a police officer to commit some of those crimes. But also, it appears there were opportunities for the police during the vetting process to find out this guy was a criminal and not just stop him being a police officer, but take action against him. My view that I've been making clear for a number of years now, and I've been criticised for this, is I think there are systemic cultural issues in the police service.
One of the reasons why I ultimately lost confidence in the previous commissioner was my lack of belief in her ability to understand this is an issue, have a plan to address this, have a plan to win the trust of confidence of Londoners. And so we've got to make sure we have a reforming commissioner doing this job. Unless the guy at the top or the woman at the top understands the problem, how are you going to fix it? I think the new commissioner and his deputy understand there's a problem and I've got a plan to fix it.
But they're taking on board the recommendations from an outsider. You can't mark your own homework. You need somebody else to look into things. tell you how bad things are, make recommendations and follow them through. So we've got an outsider, Louise Casey, to look into what's going on in the Met Police Service. She's published an interim report. The Commissioners accepted all the findings. She will now publish her final report later on this year.
We need to change the rules around how police officers are employed. So if a member of your staff had a nickname, the bastard, that would raise questions for you, right? Why is this guy's nickname amongst his colleagues, the bastard? Or other nicknames that police officers involved in this stuff have had. No action taken against them. Because it's very difficult for the commission and others to get rid of dodgy officers. The regulations... make it difficult.
But we're not asking necessarily in all cases for a criminal prosecution, we're asking for those officers to be at least sacked. So we're lobbying the government to change the regulations to make it easier for the Commission to get rid of dodgy officers. We've set up a hotline so people can ring in, and police officers can ring in about dodgy behaviour of other officers. From City Hall, without government support, from City Hall, we're investing more money in ramping up the vetting processes, right?
This guy should have been spotted a mile away. I've also asked the commissioner, well, it was his idea, to be fair, to go back 10 years and look at every single time a police officer has had a complaint made against them of this nature to see if any other opportunities missed with other officers. We've also got a new unit, which we're invested in, an anti-abuse and corruption unit. But my view is this, by the way, In London, we've shown a spotlight on this, but there are other police forces around the country where, you know, I'm sure there are other issues where that spotlight's not been shown yet.
And so it's really important for us to recognise these are systemic cultural issues across our country that demand addressing. What's been your hardest day as London Mayor? There's been a few. I think Grenfell Tower. I still remember the images. I still remember the heat of... I went to a lot of funerals. That summer was hard. I'm still in touch with the families. I see them often. And whenever I see them, it comes back. But Grenfell was just, and it still sticks with me because it could have been us.
It's a council estate, diverse estate, lovely community. Those families will always be the same again. And every time I go there, and I spend time with the families, you just think of what these families are going through. You know, one family, six people wiped out. Another 11 year old child who'd won an essay competition. And you know, when you speak to those who were the judges, she would have gone on to being you know, this amazing woman lost her life in that fire.
And so that 2017 was hard because we also had at the same time the awful fire at Grenfell and a number of terror attacks in London, London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Finsbury Park. that summer was hard, you know, because I spent a lot of time, I liked, I liked, I think it's important for me to spend time with brief families. So when I was an MP, when I was a lawyer, I spent a lot of time with brief families, my clients. When I was an MP, there was ever, you know, a homicide in Tooting.
I would meet the families, ask to meet the families. When I became mayor, I started a practice where Whenever there was a homicide in London, my office would write to the family and say, look, obviously give them my condolences, but give them my details and meet with the families. And so after Grenfell, I went to a lot of funerals, a lot of families and those families' stories stay with you. And I'm still in contact with a lot of them. That summer, June 2017.
You referenced the London Bridge attacks as well, where I think three men in a van mounted the sidewalk, then jumped out with knives and killed, I think, eight people in total in Borough Market. When you see this happening, you're at home, right? 10pm at night, you're watching the telly, you see this happening. What goes on in your head? What? So just to reassure people watching, so we need a lot of preparation, a lot of practice, a lot of planning on those sorts of things.
So you try and you're never ready for it, but you try to do what you can in advance to understand it. Because I'm not a police officer, I'm not an NMO5. I'm not counter terror, but I'm the police and ground commissioner. So I need to understand what you're doing so I can understand your job. And so I've always tried to understand what you're doing so I can be at help, not hindrance. And so when it happens, there's a lot of uncertainty in real time what's going on.
But the good news is... our police and other partners are trained for the phrases, a marauding terrorist, there's a phrase for it, there's training for it. And we learn from other countries when this happens. So the first time this sort of terror tactic was used, that's well known about, was in Delhi a number of years ago. So our police have learned what's happened there. And so we practice a lot of this stuff in relation to what the firearms team will do in this situation, what the police response will do, what my role is going to be, where I should be and so forth.
And also you've got to give assurance to Londoners. You can't play into the terrorist's hands. What does the terrorist want you to do? A terrorist wants to terrorise you and have panic spreading, changing behaviour in a way that's perverse and so forth. So it's really important the response I have to a terror attack, because I could inadvertently be playing into the hands of the terrorists. Where does emotion come into all of this? You're seeing, you know, carnage, you're seeing death.
Is there a place for emotion in all of that? In real time, there really can't be. In real time, there can't be. And that sort of stuff. There can be when it comes to a fire in Grenfell, which is a different sort of thing. But because people are looking to you to provide leadership and panic isn't good leadership. And so one of the reasons why I've asked for, and we've had the practice, the preparation, the planning, is to make sure there isn't panic and there isn't emotion.
Because you've got to make rational decisions and provide reassurance in a cool, calm way. You can't go to a Cobra meeting and be hysterical. You've got to be explaining the facts, what you've ascertained, what you're going to do, what buses are going to be diverted, what tubes are going to be stopped, you know, and so forth. Another important thing in London, in that sort of context, Stephen, is... What we can't afford to happen is reprisals, right?
People wrongly thinking every Muslim is a terrorist. We saw in America post 9-11, you know, somebody wearing a turban attacked and killed because people thought wrongly that he was involved in terrorism in 9-11. So there's that part of restoring the community tensions as well. After that incident happened, Donald Trump came out and made some disparaging comments about, I guess, about you in London, really kind of mocking what you'd said. How do you feel about that?
I mean, from my point of view, it's incredibly bizarre behaviour for a world leader to be taking such a stance after such a tragedy. But how did that feel on that day, emotionally? It was odd. Let me see why it's odd. There's basically an understanding we have. There are certain cities and certain parts of the world are targets of terrorists because of our values, because of our way of life and so forth. And so there's a sense of solidarity. We saw what happened in Paris.
We saw what happened in 9-11. There are other examples around the world in Manchester, the awful events of the Ariana Grande concert and so forth. And so there's always a sense of solidarity. And you'll see world leaders, mayors and others, sending a message of solidarity. And it's unusual, it's exceptional actually, for particularly our closest ally, right? Special relationship. You saw our Prime Minister response to 9-11, Tony Blair, George Bush.
and you have Donald Trump responding the way he does. And let's be frank, if the mayor of London wasn't somebody of my background, my faith, and so forth, and he didn't have the views he had about people of my faith and my background, he wouldn't have responded the way he did, would he? Has that played a role in how people have treated you in terms of on the other side of the aisle, people that have political views? Do you think some of... I'm reflecting now on much of what Meghan Markle said about how the institutional...
Her claims about institutional racism impacting the way she was treated by the press and by the institution itself. But when I think about you being probably Britain's most famous... Muslim, you are the mayor of London, do you believe that there has been instances, and there are just generally a bias because you are a Muslim yourself? And how does that rear its head on like a day-to-day, month-to-month basis? Well, looking backwards, I mean, I'm sure you've read about my first election campaign in 2016, right?
My faith was used against me by my opponents. You know, you're kind of a Muslim over-mair, links with terrorism, so forth, so forth, for no other reason but because of, to be frank, my faith, right? And that's why it's so important to win. Because had I not won, if you're an Asian or a Muslim, or whatever you're thinking, hold on a sec, it's not possible to be the mayor of London because of your faith that holds you back. And that's why winning was important for a variety of other reasons as well.
But you know, the thing about our city, is not understanding the prejudices against the religion that I practice because a minority of terrorists do bad things using the name of Islam. This city voted for not just an ethnic minority, not just a religious minority, but the religion he belongs to is Islam. So something wonderful about our city, not just tolerating difference, respecting, embracing and celebrating it as well. But I can't escape the fact that, you know, being a Muslim, when we're living in a climate of Islamophobia, has challenges as well.
It's not a secret. So I'm not divulging any breaches of, you know, national security. the Christchurch shooter in New Zealand, you know, referenced me in his diatribe, the Finsbury Park terrorist, you know, referenced me in his terrorist attack in Finsbury Park outside the mosque. You know, I'm not giving equivalence to Donald Trump in relation to terrorists, but Donald Trump, for a period of time was obsessed with me. And so that leads to, you go to social media, some of the stuff that I get on social media, right?
You go to some of the far right groups, some of the stuff I receive there. Some of the, you know, in virtue of commerce, mainstream journalists who use me as clickbait, they know if they use my name, it's gonna attract traffic to their social media channels. They know that. And I think- But of course it is, right? Because we know, There's a currency, there's a currency, right? And we know for reasons that aren't fair to Muslims, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority who live in the West, love the West, law abiding and so forth, the actions of a small minority means we're all demonised.
And so... I was reading The Independent and it was... they were talking about the death threats you'd received on social media. You'd come out and talked about some of the comments that people had made to you, calling you a... words that I probably can't even repeat, and I won't repeat to be fair, but very derogatory, racist, homosexual at times, terminology towards you which oftentimes included death threats. The Independent had written an article showing what those threats were.
Have you ever felt like your safety was at risk? Yeah, it's been a few times. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, I now have police protection. Not because I asked for it. For a year I said no. And in the end, my wife and my chief of staff said, you've got to take it. Why? Because two reasons. Because if I'm out with my family, their personal safety is being compromised, right? I can't have that. If I'm out with my staff working, their personal safety is being compromised and I'm not willing to take that risk either.
And so, you know, there'd been specific threats. But the problem with police protection is it means you lose your spontaneity. So, you know, I came here by tube. I'm not, you know, the police officers on the tube with me, right? You wouldn't know they were there, you know, and so forth. But they've got to be with me when I go to a restaurant, when I go to the cinema and I'm walking my dog when I'm getting the tube, right? And so it restricts my ability to just, you know.
Have you ever been... genuinely worried about your safety? A couple of times, yeah. There was an occasion where, yeah, there's been a number of occasions. I probably, I don't want to give them the credit by making them know that I was scared and worried about my safety because, you know, they all think they can do it again. But yeah, there have been occasions, even with police protection. My part team are brilliant, you know, but I've asked them to just, you know, keep a distance because I want, I don't want them to be next to me like, I mean, I'm a celebrity or the prime minister.
You know, I like the fact that, that I'm a normal Joe. And I try and be as much as I can. But there have been times, yeah, of course they have, as mayor. But there have been times I've been more of a security before I was mayor, you know. And that's, you know, 9-11 was traumatic for a variety of reasons. Thousands of people lost their lives. It was just awful, awful. What it did though, was it gave, it gave permission of people to treat all of us, you know, in a way that I had not experienced before.
So when I was growing up, the P word, the N word, the W word was sometimes used. And, you know, my white friends, black friends and me knew that was, that was like, that was, we'd see the red mist and there'd be fight, right? You couldn't, yeah. And, but, but. It was never about faith. And I'm not saying one is better than the other and stuff, right? But something happened where it became about faith and the Islamophobia stuff. And there is still a great sense of solidarity in relation to people who still defend me who aren't Muslims and stuff, right?
What it does is a number of things. Firstly, if you're a mum or dad and you're Muslim and your son or daughter is thinking about Korean politics or public life, you say, you know what? If someone likes Sadiq Khan to get in that sort of stuff, I don't really want you to get involved in politics or, and this happens a lot. If you're somebody who wants to amplify my social media or be supportive, and you do it and then you get this diatribe of hate because you've done that.
There's two responses. And nine out of 10 people say, I had no idea that you received this stuff. How can I help? One out of 10 people will say, you know what? This is a bit too much, you know, I'm not gonna actually. Has it ever affected you personally? Sleepless nights? In relation to? Hate, abuse, trials. I worry about my, I want to make sure my wife and kids are safe. I want to make sure they're safe. At the moment, I've got the, you know, I'm lucky I've got a police protection team keeping me safe, right?
But we, you know, the City Hall, you know, receives threats. And, you know, so this, we're at this ridiculous situation where because of the hatred against me, people are writing letters and emails to City Hall staff who in the previous 16 years haven't had this. We've had a mayor since 2000. And we've got to provide our staff, and this is not ridiculous, the ridiculous part is us receiving hatred, but we've got a duty of care to our staff, right?
Our staff are traumatised, upset, all the rest of it. So we now got to support our staff in ways never done before. So that worries me, the fact that they've impacted my staff, reading this stuff, the emails, reading the letters that come in, the impact of my staff reading the social media, the impact of my family reading this stuff. I'm not gonna allow anybody to change my behavior. I will not cower. But also I will not let you know if you're bullying me that I feel it.
So even if I was being affected and I'm not, I wouldn't tell the guys that I'm being affected because it gives them solace, it gives them comfort. It means they've won. I'm not gonna do that. But in this kind of medium, I think there is value in sharing that because people don't realise, right? So it's a world that we don't know, so we don't care about, so we don't, as a society, do anything about because we don't even know it exists. I mean, much of what you've said is news to me.
The fact that you're telling me your staff need, I'm presuming, psychological support because of the amount of abuse you're getting. And at the heart of that is your religion. And your race. So often other things will come into it, but you just have to read. Just when you get a chance, it's not good for your mental health, but when you get a chance, just have a look at some of the stuff that people say about me. And it's not all bots, by the way.
But has that ever infected you? Because I can tell you, I've had a target at me and it affected me. And I don't mind saying that because I think it's just the truth, to be fair. So has it ever... Has there ever been, you know, anxiety, worries? No, no. It's affected me in the sense that, you know, I've spoken to social media companies and others about the responsibility they have, about their algorithms, about, you know, employing staff to take this stuff off.
You know, my staff, not me, have reported some of this stuff to the police and actually taking it to some of the people who've said some of this stuff because of the incitement elements of it. I think there are issues here. about the ease with which social media allows people with hateful, spiteful, racist, criminal views to have those views amplified where they wouldn't 20 years ago. So 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So when I was growing up, right, you can only bully me if you saw me in the playground or if you saw me down the street.
You can only call me names that way. You could maybe write me a letter if you knew where I lived. Now you can do it from your bedroom without even being in the same city as me, the same country as me. Anonymously. Anonymously as well. And some of these algorithms amplify this. And some of these people have got big followings and they all jump on the bandwagon as well. And so, you know, there is a problem there in relation to how we deal with this stuff, but also listen, it's happening to, you speak to a girl in a secondary school, some of the stuff she now receives, or, you know, black kids going to school now, in their bedroom on social media, right?
And so, you know, this is not just an issue for me, I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me, but it's an issue for everyone. COVID, speaking of mental health, I heard you said that during the COVID period, you you did suffer a little bit with your own mental health. Can you give me some detail on what you mean by that? Yeah. Look, before we came in, we were talking about, you know, return to the office and stuff. And I'm somebody who, by the way, you don't realize this at the time.
So I'm somebody who I now realize thrives on working with people, being around people, on company, right? And I didn't really appreciate that until the pandemic. And I'm lucky I've got a decent sized home. My daughters came on from university. My wife, we get on really well, we do. You know, and so we can give each other space and stuff. And so I've got a garden, we've got a dog. But I realized that there was a, there wasn't a light bulb moment, but I, but in hindsight I realized I stopped shaving, you know, I, you know, I'd wear jogging bobs all day.
I wasn't as communicative. Of course I'd shave if I was doing, you know, morning breakfast shows or whatever. I didn't have my mojo. I like to think that I can inspire my team. Like, I, I, you know, you know, you don't start when you manage people, right? I didn't, I just didn't, I just, there was something not quite right and I couldn't, I didn't know that in real time, I didn't, you know, I didn't, but they were saying, and I just did, and, and, and in hindsight, what I realized was that there were things I did in my normal life that gave me mental fitness and physical fitness, mental fitness, right?
And because I wasn't doing those. I was suffering mental ill health. Now, fortunately I needed to be medicalised, but it meant I had to think about the things I got to do to keep my mental health well. And I struggled and on hindsight, there was a period of time where I wasn't top of my game because I now am. And because, you know, after a while I realised this and was taking steps to address that. And I realised I can't work from home in perpetuity.
I need to be around people. I need that buzz, whether it's the banter on the tube, whether it's meeting my staff, whether it's that conversation before I go into the office, that team meeting. I didn't realise that's what helps me keep my mental health, but also makes me, you know, be effective. And it's other things, you know, sport. I didn't realise how important sport is to me. I didn't realise not playing tennis, not going for a run, not playing football.
I didn't realise that because I thought I did that to keep physically fit. Not realise it actually is an integral part in my mental wellbeing. When you think about your job as mayor over the last, you know, since you were elected mayor, where do you think you've let yourself down? Well, that's a good question. I think you alluded to this early on, the seven days a week stuff. When you speak to most experts, and I speak to lots of, I'm privileged speaking to you, I speak to lots of people who, they say that's really important to get the balance right in relation to being fresh for the time where you've got to be on.
My response is I'm on quite a lot. So I've got to use the time when I'm off to make sure I recharge my batteries. And so I think that pacing myself, I've tried to run a marathon as a sprint. What about policies? Things you would have liked to have gotten done that you've not been able to get done. A lot of people have leveled the things like housing and will we be carbon neutral by 2030? What are the things you look at and go, do you know what, I failed there?
Yeah, well, I'm not gonna answer that question honestly, but I'm running for reelection in 467 days time, right? Because the answer is gonna use against me. But let me tell you some of the stuff we've got, we've done lots of stuff right as well as just stuff we've done wrong. I think the biggest thing I've done wrong- Is that real? Is that like a real thing where you can't tell the truth because someone might use it against you? I think the thing that I've been least effective about, and I've said this before, is that we've not managed to persuade the government the importance of devolving more powers and resources to London.
The government's, you know, my dad used to say that, you know, you should judge somebody by the friends you keep, right? I've got a different saying, which is judge somebody by their enemies. you know, and the government don't like me, right? And so the politics is the main reason. And so the government, and I think I've sometimes not helped because of my pugilistic nature, And I worry, have London has been let down because the government see me as an enemy, not giving London the support they would give if somebody else was the mayor.
§03Transcript — part 3
And so I've tempered, you know, since I won re-election, I've tempered some of that because I realised I can't allow my natural adversarial nature, my dislike of the government to get in the way of doing business with the government. So that's the honest answer. But by the way, I meant what I said about this, when you said tongue in cheek, well, can you not be honest? Yeah, because I'm still in the game, right? So when you ask an ex-politician questions like that, they'll give you a candid answer.
But you can't, it's like asking Tyson Fury, Tyson, what's the weakness in your game? What, you know, you wouldn't do that. I'm not saying I'm Tyson Fury, but I'm still top of my game. It's really interesting. Part of me think it's an interesting game politics and all this stuff. It's not a game. It's not a game. You just said you're still in the game. I'm using your word, but it's an interesting game to me because I don't feel like politicians can ever be truly themselves.
They can't truly speak their mind. And I impart, I wonder if that's actually acting against them. I think there's almost this political kind of... this political, I don't know, philosophy or whatever, where you kind of have to be a little bit cagey. You kind of have to never really answer a question. You kind of have to get by. Yes and no. To his credit, Trump, the thing he did, and I hate to say Trump did anything well, but the thing he did, you know what you're getting with this guy.
Whether it's good, bad, driven by narcissism, whatever. you have this sense that he's telling you what he thinks. I've got at least 17 responses to that. Let me give you a couple. So one is, which is interesting, is I think Trump's, one of Trump's tweets that he said against me was hashtag stone cold loser describing me, right? Well, he lost his re-election, I didn't. True. So he's a one-term president. Barack Obama isn't. Even George W. Bush isn't.
Do you think he's coming back? He's going to try and come back. And he's got a good chance. I think DeSantis will probably get the Republican nomination. How do you feel about that? Him coming back? Honestly. Well, I want him to come back and be beaten. So I think politics, you know, the reason why I said about, you know, I'm still in the game is because it's a good metaphor because I learn a lot from sports. I love sports and stuff. And a lot of leadership skills I get from sports.
But let me tell you why you're both right and wrong in relation to your observation, which I think is right and it's wrong. So when you're an MP, I think you're right. I think most MPs, have got to be inauthentic. I'll tell you why, because in Parliament, there's something called collective responsibility. And you've got to stay in your lane for a start. So if you're a transport minister, you can really only talk about transport. Because if I have a view about health, it'll annoy the health secretary.
Or if I have a view about foreign policy or health, it'll upset the foreign secretary, right? Or the budget. And so you've got to stay in your lane, which is a frustration because you've got to stand by the policies they've got in their other areas, right? So you've got to be inauthentic. But also this thing called collective responsibility. So inside the cabinet, what happens is, if there's a good, strong prime minister, there'll be an argument and discussion inside cabinet about policy.
And you can have a different view. You can be honest then. But once you reach a view, when you leave the cabinet, all of you, I've got to defend that view and be advocates of the view. And that's why you're spot on. So, and it reminds me of being a lawyer. I've got to say, hand on heart, there were cases I had where I didn't agree with the brief or like it, but I had to argue the case. I was the lawyer, right? And the same goes when you were an MP.
The difference when you're the mayor or the president you can be yourself. So what's Labour getting wrong? I think we get lots of things right to be fair. Come on, there's not... I mean, I think, you know, when I think about the last two, three years since Keir became leader, we've got a lot of things right. I think the frustration voters have, which I think is not fair, is we're not putting enough flesh in the detail, right? And there's a reason for that, I explain.
So the answer to your question, direct answer is, we're not given enough retail policy, enough reasons to vote Labour, Yes, time for change is effective, but people would say, what Labour's getting wrong is not giving details of policy. My response is, hold on a sec. You've got to peak at the right time. The general election might not be until 20 months away. So if Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor, came up with a policy on the budget, well, the economy in 20 months time is going to be very different from the economy now.
How could she honestly be asked to give a tax and spend policy now? Well, Keir Starmer announced it's a great policy. the windfall levy on energy companies. Sunak nicks it, dilutes it a bit. So soon it gets the credit, not care, your best policy has been started. And so the point is you've got to peak at the right time and the peroration has got to come in the weeks before the election. That's interesting because the question I asked is what's Labour getting wrong?
And you didn't answer that. I didn't explain it. It's the retail. That's the public perception of what Labour's getting wrong. I'm saying, what do you think Labour's getting wrong? Yeah, but Steve, that's my point. Listen. If you say nothing, that's fine. No, no, no, no. Listen, but my point is this. There's two points to that. One is, I say this with respect and love, you know, advice I give to care, I'd give in private, not in public, right? That's the first thing.
And secondly... there's a general election in 20 months time. And, you know, my point about, you know, I'm still in the game, is, you know, I want to make sure that privately, the views I've got about what levels are getting wrong are sorted out before the general election, rather than telegraphing to the opposition things we're getting wrong, so they can, you know, using the boxing metaphor, try and not Keir Starmer out. And that's kind of similar to what you were saying about the MPs having to kind of...
stay in their lane because they can't be critical of anything else that's happening around them. I get it. It's a party. I guess that's how the system works. But as a muggle who doesn't really, isn't that interested in, well, I'm interested in politics, but I'm not heavily engaged in politics. But here's your conundrum though, Stephen. And it's a good conundrum to have, which is the next general election, probably one of two people that will be prime minister, right?
Sunak or Keir Starmer. Unless Sunak goes the way of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, right? And so politics isn't perfection, it's relativism. And so you've got to choose between one of these two. There's nobody else, it's not Keir Starmer or perfection. Do you know what it is though? It's the appearance of perfection, right? Because as you said, you can't- He's perfect though, in our lifetime. No one is, but that's what I'm saying. It's the appearance of it.
In the sense that like, you can't criticise Labour. Oh, I can, believe me, I can. Look, I'll give you an example. But publicly, I mean- So publicly, in the last two weeks, I criticised Labour, right, on Brexit. I believe Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster. Right? I believe that we've got to be much closer to the EU. And that includes, by the way, yes, outside the EU now, we are outside the EU, but being members of the single market and customs union.
That is not Labour's policy. Right? How does Labour get back in power? When I was younger, listen, again, if I'm wrong about any of this political stuff, please, like with my dates and stuff, please forgive me. But I'm just saying, when I was younger, Labour were in power. And then since pretty much over the last 10 years, Labour haven't been back in power. What's Labour getting wrong? Why isn't it resonating with the voters? And how does Labour go about fixing that?
So the last... 100 years. I mean, we've only been in power for a third of that. To give you an idea of, you know, we're not the man united of politics, you know. And so, a number of things we ought to do to win back power. First, we've got to change ourselves. So we've got to, the first part of it is, reorganising labour ourselves, so internal stuff, the internal wiring is wrong. What's wrong with it? So this idea that anybody is successful, you know, we've got to bash this idea that we, you know, that the way we fundraise for our party, the way we employ staff and fire staff, this sense of, you know, nepotism and stuff.
There's lots of things we've got wrong, you know, in the last few years. We've got to, you know, We sort ourselves out, including an organisation, employ the right people, get rid of the wrong people, have a proper social media campaign, lots of stuff, proper campaigning techniques. So the internal stuff you got to do, the stuff you don't see, how we select candidates, all that sort of stuff, right? The second part of it is be an effective opposition, expose the Tories and call them out when they get things wrong.
We can't rely upon the mainstream media. You know, 80% of the mainstream media is supportive of the Conservative Party, right? It's just a fact. So we've got to be an effective opposition in calling them out and hold them to account, right? Including stuff that would otherwise not be seen. So call them out in relation to policies on the economy, you know, call them out in relation to health service, call them out in relation to policies on education.
And the third part, which is the crucial part, is to show the country we've got policies to be an effective government. And that's my point about the perception is we've not done the third part yet. And my answer is holding this door 20 months to go. My point is this. I don't want to win an election because it's time for change by itself. I want you to be inspired and enthused to vote Labour because of our policy offer. And that's your challenge back to me saying, what's your, why vote Labour, right?
You know what's interesting? I've been doing a lot of reading over the last couple of weeks because I'm writing my new book and I've spent... you know, a good 30 days in total, probably in the jungle reading about psychology and why people, what makes people behave and act and whatever. And the clear answer from all of that research that I've done and all the studies I went through going back almost 100 years was that people respond emotionally instead of to logic.
And so when you say that we need to lead with better policies and stuff, it kind of goes... It stands in the face of all of the psychological research I've been reading that says, in fact, people are illogical emotional beings that are driven by their fears and desires. And when I think about politics, honestly, right, and I'm just being completely honest, I think a lot of it is actually just a very instinctive feeling about the person. You know?
And this is why I go back to the point about authenticity and why I really struggle with politicians sometimes is... they just don't feel like humans. They feel like these like robots that can't say anything or can't speak their mind. And I just, honestly, my view with Labour is if they managed to get someone to lead the party who felt like my mate, that I kind of related to and tell me the good and the bad, and was just a bit of a normal person, not super rich, not whatever, didn't go to Eton, or whatever it is, talking about both sides here.
I actually think they'd win. I think from many people... And Boris Johnson did win. Right, listen, if the test was, if the test was, who do I want to have a cappuccino with? Yeah. Or who do I want to pick up the government finances, get us through the pandemic, mend our relationship with Europe? There's a different answer. But you're right, it's an emotion. And so there's a great phrase, right? You campaign in poetry and you government in prose because it's the emotion, right?
Yeah. You know, the emotion is really important. But my point is, is... we see where it's got our country. Where has emotion got our country? And so I think actually one of the failures of politicians, and I also plead guilty, is we've lost the art to be good teachers, right? Political education is lacking in our country. And so I think a good politician should use his or her role in an unpatronising way to educate people. You know, you asked me really good questions about crime, right?
Now, the easy thing to say, you know, just lock them up. Let's arrest ourselves out of this, right? That plays your emotion, because you want the people who burgled your home to be arrested, put in prison and the key's thrown away, right? Probably, I'm just afraid, right? But actually, it's my job to, in an unpassionised way, try and educate you without excusing criminality, but saying it's a bit more complex than that, right? Yeah. But you understand though, I sat here with- I get the emotion, I get it, I get it.
I sat here with a neuroscientist called Tally Charlotte, and she has basically written a book about this, about how the brain has a default towards listening to emotion. She actually referenced Trump. She said, in that debate with the doctor, I think it was in the 2008 elections or 2008, 12 elections, when asked about the autism vaccines, the doctor who Trump was up against in the debate referenced facts, stats and figures. It then comes to Trump and he tells a story about one of his mates with a big needle, you know, he uses all of this descriptive, emotional storytelling language.
And Tali, even though she knows the science around vaccines, she said she was a little bit put off giving her daughter the autism vaccine after hearing Trump, even though she knew it was nonsense. And for me, that just goes to show the power of like emotion and storytelling versus... the feeble influence that stats and figures. I saw it in the Brexit campaign, right? So what happened in the Brexit campaign is, is Nigel Farage and his lot put up this poster.
Yeah, about the NHS and about immigrants. The poster was a queue of Syrians, giving the impression that they're going to flood our country because of the Turkey allegedly joining the European Union. And emotionally that played to people's concerns on immigration. I mean, Brexit was a proxy of immigration, right? And so it was an emotional stuff because rationally, It doesn't make sense if you work for Nistad in Sunderland to be voting to leave the EU.
Because you know your boss is going to be affected by it, right? Because it's- and so I don't disagree with what you're saying. Your analysis, I get it. It's emotion rather than rational. My point is, yes, that's true in relation to human behaviour. But actually at the same time, we've got to be explaining to people that actually it is an X factor. It's about who's the best person to run our country. And sometimes that person, you know, is not going to be sexy.
He's not going to be charismatic. Sometimes he will be. And over a course of an election and a campaign, you can't be personality comes out because you're right, personality does matter to an extent. But actually, you know, I want our leaders to know how to, you know, how a balance sheet works. understand what makes a business tick, understands the importance of entrepreneurship, job creation, public services, that stuff. I want that too. It just seems like deep, innate in human psychology is this desire to be motivated most by our fears, our desires and our emotions versus logic and sense.
And maybe this is a little bit of a skewed perspective I have because I've spent the last 30 days reading about this psychology and why people are influenced. But... But the thing is, you listen... Can I just... I wanted to ask on the positive side, what are you most proud of following your tenure so far as London Mayor? What are the things that you go, do you know what, where you really had an impact here for the betterment of Londoners? Air quality is the obvious example to think of.
When I was walking here from the tube station, I saw the Ultralight Mission Street. Hackney had done really, really well. So we've managed to... So you don't see this stuff. None of us sees this stuff. But if we were growing up in London in the 50s, you'd see the smog, right? Because the power stations, you could see it. You literally couldn't walk because of the smog, more than a meter and a half. It was a killer as well. So we can't see the nitrogen dioxide, the nitrogen oxide, the particular matter, certainly the carbon emissions, but at least more than 4,000 premature deaths a year, at least to children having stunted lungs, at least to adults with a whole host of health issues, me included, asthma, premature heart disease, deaths, cancer, and so forth.
We've managed to, in two years, reduced the toxic air in the centre of our city by half, and we're improving it more across our cities. Air quality is obviously a big one. Council housing. You mentioned housing. We last year, well, actually the last few years, we have completed more homes in London because of our policies than any year since the 1930s. More council homes than any year since the 1970s. More generally affordable homes than any year since records began.
Not enough. We've got to do much more to increase supply to meet demand. But, Slightly shy of your goal? No, my goal is much more. So my target is 50,000, but we're not going to get there. And I've said to the government, we need more support. And it's actually, there's an opportunity if there's a recession coming because of the way the counter-sickle nature of the property market, we can have more home building actually, and that creates jobs and people paying taxes and so forth.
Look at what we've done in public transport. My first five years, we froze fares, the night tube up and running. You know, we've got buses going all across London now, more buses. too many more kilometres of buses next year. The Elizabeth Line, the Northern Line extension, Parkham Riverside extension. Look at what we talked about in relation to mentors. 100,000 young people have a mentor, made progress on reducing crime, invested in young people.
And if you're elected, again, what's your number one focus for London? It's all about the future where we can do with the four issues which are really important. A fairer city. So those who need a helping hand, get the helping hand. A safer city. I think the perception is our city isn't safe. I want to address the reality and the perception. A greener city. We've got to reduce carbon emissions. I was the first global city to declare a climate emergency.
I've changed the net zero target from 2050 when I won't be around as the mayor. 2030, right? Will we get there? Yeah, but only a third of the powers I've got. The other two thirds, we need government support, retrofitting, building sites, so forth. The transport we've got, we're making progress there. But you think we'll get there? Yeah, and if there's a change of government in two years' time, I hope they will be with Kira as Prime Minister, we definitely will get there, and a more prosperous city as well.
I think our competitors are also our collaborators, the Parises, the Singapores, the Hong Kongs, the New Yorks, but they're our competitors as well. We've got to be more prosperous. You're 52 now, right? Yeah. If you were to, God forbid, if you were to, if this were to be your last day, what regrets would you have about the life you've chosen to live and how you've lived it? Crikey. Maybe not work seven days a week, maybe more time with my family.
I don't think I've seen enough of the world. You know, I've only ever lived in Tuts and I spent three years in North London, one year in Godalming at law school when I was in Guildford. I mean, I've seen the world as a tourist, right, but not, not, I've not really experienced it. You mentioned the long time you spent in the jungle and stuff, and I've not, I've not done that. Maybe I missed that. Got a picture here for you. That's my dad. He passed away, was it 2001?
September the 4th, 2003. I remember it vividly. It was the one thing in my life that's really knocked me sideways. And I still grieve my dad, you know. And I've never got help, even though I was struggling at the time. Because I think... You should grieve for people you love. It should affect your mental illness. It should debilitate you. He was this amazing man, you know. This was a guy who, no ears or graces. He'd watch the news, he'd read the papers.
He would spend time with the kids. He would, you know, he would never say no to overtime in the garage. Never say no to overtime in the garage. thoroughly decent man. When he retired, he would spend time in the mosque. He was the moisin. The moisin is the guy that does a call to prayer. Did you speak to him properly? No. That's a regret. We didn't get the quality. You know, Anissa was, my oldest daughter was five, four when he passed away. Mara was two.
They didn't get to name really. I didn't have the, he would have loved me being a mayor. He would have loved, you know, support, you know, Southern Cathedral, the Sweronian Ceremony. How old were you when he passed away? I was 33. And what I think about is I was too young when he passed. And, you know, I didn't know I was depressed at the time. I was depressed. Sotheby's spotted it. I wasn't functioning. I threw myself into work. Shortly after I ran to be the Labour candidate actually, because that's how I got through this time.
But I think about my youngest brother was only 25 when he passed. And I was, and we've now, I think since we've had kids, that's made us much more touchy feeling, talking about feelings and stuff. We hug and we say, I love you and stuff. And we... Are there words unsaid to him? Yeah, without a doubt. What are those words? Yeah, they're between him and me, to be honest. But it's... Yeah. Yeah. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
You will know who this person is, but I shan't tell you. The question they've left is, everyone gets really nervous when I get to this question. I don't know why, it's weird. Nobody cares about my questions, but then when this one comes, it takes people forever to answer. If you could give one piece of advice to yourself at the start of your life, what would it have been? That's a good one. Enjoy the experience. Why that? Because often, I don't know if you get to do it, you're so busy, you don't get to enjoy it.
When you speak to people who have, we talk, we talk teasingly about being an ex politician, they follow the memory, but they enjoy the experience. And I remember saying, I remember famous footballer Gary Neville being interviewed and saying he didn't really enjoy it. And I think I find that odd. You know, you don't enjoy the experience. And so enjoy the experience, you know. And actually, you know, when your ambition is always trying to do the next thing, right?
And I think ambition is important. It is important to, you know, to have, you know, a grasp greater than your reach. But in the meantime, enjoy the experience. Have you enjoyed the experience? Loved it. I loved it. But, you know, but question, have I savored it with my friends and family enough? Have I just been too busy and too blinkered in relation to sharing the enjoyment of the experience? And I tried doing that more. So I try and include Simon and the girls more in the stuff that I do to make sure they enjoy the experience and my friends and, you know, my family and so forth.
Sadiq, thank you. Thank you for your time. And thank you for being here. I'm very, as I said, I'm very compelled by politicians and the world of politics, because it's not a world that I know necessarily well, but it's a world that I observe with great intrigue and wonder. I'd say, dissatisfaction largely. I'd say largely because it just seems to be so far away from the, like, what I love about, I don't know, humans. Which politicians do you admire, either overseas or here?
I loved Barack Obama. I thought he was great. We all loved Barack Obama. Yeah, I know. He's only one Barack Obama. Exactly. I think because he felt incredibly human. I remember watching him cry after Sandy Hook, and he just felt like a good man with a good family and good morals, and I kind of felt like he had... He was authentic. That's a good one. Yeah, I think he's probably my number one. The problem is you set your bar so high. I know. None of us are Barack Obama.
Yeah, I know. But I think everyone has the potential to be, to emulate him in some respects. Obama's an easy one. Who else? Oh, gosh. I like Bernie Sanders as well. Another guy that I just, I connect with, and I think he's very authentically driven, um, to make the world a better place. Um, and I see that in your story as well. I see, you know, when you hear your, your upbringing and you hear what your parents went through and your grandparents went through and that the plight of your, um, those that came before you, you see that you can see a clear reason why.
Sometimes I struggle with that. Sometimes I struggle to understand why people are going into politics. I think it's because of status or cause they want to be famous or they want power. And, um, But I don't see that in you. I don't see, you know, you had a very well-paid job before you chose to embark on this career path. And your origin story is riddled with all the motivation one would need to pursue such a path. So thank you. Thank you for coming here today.
I wish you the very, very best on your re-election. I applaud you on the fact that knife crime has gone down since you became mayor of London. And I would hope that, by the time you leave office, the city feels a lot safer than it currently does for me. I really do hope we hit our carbon emissions targets by 2030. I hope we're able to build more housing. And I hope London holds its status in the world as a place that people want to come live and stay long beyond their own sort of personal successes.
So yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks for the kind words you said at the start. It's very uncomfortable for me to hear that, but- No, but it's important you hear that. And this is one of the things I've tried to do is, Rather than, it's very easy, and you're very generous in your comments about me and my faith and my background, to be the only person in my position who looks like me. I guess there's only one of me, right?
What's far, and the same goes for you, but what you do, which I've tried to do as well in different ways, is put down ladders for others, right? Because there shouldn't just be one guy like you. There should be many others like you. And the same goes in politics as well. And I remember what I said, because the interesting thing about you, and the same applies to you, you ever watch what Idris Elba does or Riz Ahmed or these other guys? their work ethic.
And what worries me is somehow somebody's told young people, you can get rich quick. There's a shortcut to being the mayor or running the law firm or being a successful entrepreneur or being a pop star. You ever listen to what Ed Sheeran did before they became successful or Adele? or Stormzy, that work ethic. And I meant what I said about you because, listen, obviously there aren't many people in your positions who look like you, let's be frank, who dress like you, who talk like you, who've got your backstory.
Now, you've never asked to be a role model, right? You will never meet people who look up to you, but it's a fact, right? And so I'm not going to say I'm the mayor, right? And my job is to, you know, do this thing, what I call the London Promise. Work hard. I'll give you the helping hand. You can be anything. And I love the way you do it with ease and make people feel if I can do it, you can do it. And that's an art because you don't say it like it's easy.
I did it. But if I can do it, you can do it. But you've got to work hard. Yeah. And I'm really happy. I'm really happy that we have a London mayor that looks like you. You know, your presence alone as London mayor is a really positive signal to lots of young, ethnically diverse kids that are hoping to set foot in politics. And it's a real shame that you've been treated in terms of the death threats and the online abuse in such a vulgar way. But unfortunately, that seems to be the nature of the world in social media.
Hopefully we can change that. Thanks, Sal.