When it comes to women’s safety, Sadiq Khan cares only for optics
Women are done with platitudes, Sadiq Khan must make London safer if he is to prove he actually cares about women’s safety, writes Aaron Newbury
Nearly a year ago, Sadiq Khan promised action, but today, Londoners are still waiting.
Last year, as polls tightened and the Mayor was under fire for a skyrocketing record of violence against women, Khan rushed out a policy to try and nip negative coverage in the bud. Faced with a Tory challenger pledging to overhaul how the Met tackles violence against women, Khan pledged a “lived experience” project, where 60 women would be paid to ‘audit’ safety concerns across five London locations.
Defiant, he pledged that this would all be possible with “the winds of a labour government” behind him. Alas, Khan claimed, the only thing standing in the way of a safer London was the Tories (who hadn’t run the city in eight years).
It was a flimsy, hastily packaged policy that looked better in a press release than in real life. But Khan got his headline.
Yet, in a city where women’s safety is under constant threat, from harassment and assault on the Tube to a rising wave of violent crime, why does action always lag behind a press release under our performative Mayor?
Under Khan, announcements come thick and fast. Delivery? Not so much.
And this isn’t the first time women’s safety has been used by the powerful to garner headlines and political capital.
Take the ‘Have A Word’ campaign — a slogan masquerading as a strategy, as if a stern look between mates would solve systemic violence.
When you look at the litany of pledges and promises around this vital area of law enforcement, we’re left to ask: Is the Mayor more interested in optics than outcomes?
Londoners don’t need more branded campaigns, more excuses for the Mayor to prance onto a stage and get his snaps ready for Instagram. We need more officers on the beat, better lit streets and safer transport links.
In our city now, sexual offences continue to rise. Women continue to report harassment on public transport only to have their attacker left unperturbed and not pursued by the law or Transport for London. Confidence and trust in policing continue to be waylaid by scandals involving officers’ treatment of women.
Public safety requires more than platitudes; it needs the firm political will of a Mayor with a sustained focus to fix the problems bubbling under the hood and crack down on them in the streets.
If women feel unsafe walking home at night or taking the Tube across London, then it is the city and its Mayor that has failed them. When Khan allows these issues to drift, he tells women across London that their safety is not his priority.
A year after the announcement, where was the lived experience pilot he had promised? If it exists, our publicity-hungry Mayor has kept it well out of sight. Which locations were chosen? What funding backs up its recommendations? When will it be delivered, and when will we see its outcomes?
Either the Mayor has no intention of following through on his promise, or City Hall is once again asleep at the wheel.
Khan must deliver a full public update on the project as soon as possible, and lay out an actionable and funded plan to put resources behind improving the safety of Londoners. CCTV on the Tube would be a start.
Women’s safety, like the safety of all who live and work in our city, should never be just a slogan and a photo op. Londoners deserve a Mayor who listens, leads and delivers — not just one who tweets.