Cleverly: Khan talks more about Gaza ‘than black kids getting murdered in London’
Sadiq Khan has said more about Gaza than “black kids getting murdered in south-east London”, the Home Secretary has said.
James Cleverly accused Mr Khan, the Labour Mayor of London, of being “asleep at the wheel” and cited his record on knife crime and policing in the capital.
His comments came just a week before the London mayoral election, with polls predicting that Mr Khan will comfortably win a third term in office.
Susan Hall, the Tory candidate in the mayoral race, is currently lagging far behind Mr Khan in the polls. But a recent poll by Savanta for the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University gave Mr Khan his smallest lead so far, of 13 points.
Speaking at a lunch for journalists in Westminster, the Home Secretary said: “The bottom line is the guy’s been asleep at the wheel and doing the occasionally punchy social media clip slating Donald Trump when he was president, just talking about anything and everything.
“I’ve heard him talk more about Gaza than black kids getting murdered in south-east London. Unacceptable.”
A spokesman for Mr Khan called the remarks “vile comments about the deaths of children that do not deserve the dignity of a response”.
In October, Mr Khan called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, putting himself at odds with Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, at the time.
Asked about Mrs Hall, Mr Cleverly said: “Knife crime is coming down across the whole of the UK, except for London. Police numbers are going up across the whole of the UK except for, once again, London.
“Where is the coverage? This is our capital city. Ten million people being failed, unremarked upon largely by the media, and then people turn around and say ‘Oh, Susan hasn’t put herself up for scrutiny’. I don’t buy that.”
It comes as Lord Hayward, the polling expert, predicted that the Tories would lose upwards of 400 council seats nationwide on May 2, a wipeout that would add to jitters among Tory MPs about Rishi Sunak’s future in Downing Street.
In predictions for Channel 4 News, Lord Hayward suggested Labour would gain between 200 and 250 seats, with around 100 for the Liberal Democrats.
Asked about Conservative colleagues considering sending in letters of no confidence if results next week were dire, Mr Cleverly said: “If you’re going to jump out of an aeroplane, please make sure you’ve got a parachute before you leave the aeroplane and don’t say no, we’ll work that out on the way down.
“Those people who think that another leadership campaign, as truncated as it might be between now and the election, is anything other than a catastrophically bad idea – I don’t get it.
“We should have the discipline to stay focused on what we have achieved in Government and what we’re planning to do next rather than feed the psychodrama, which is fascinating but it’s not how you do good government.”
