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Is London unsafe?
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Aug 16, 2025
Right-wing politicians from Nigel Farage to JD Vance have been making hay of crime problems in big cities. But are these places really the hellholes they're made out to be? John Sutherland was the Met Police's Chief Superintendent and fought crime in England's capital for 25 years. He joins Shelagh Fogarty to give his insight into 'Lawless London.' Tony calls in from Wapping (10:23) to dispute Mr Sutherland's view. Caller Steve (16:19) rings in to throw his support behind Mr Sutherland. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #shelaghfogary #london #crime #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
I've just been on a family holiday and I'd flown into Heathrow from Washington DC
0:04
and you're absolutely right to draw the parallels between American politics at the moment and
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right-wing politics over here at the moment. You know, beware politicians bearing slogans
0:17
I've lived in inner London for over 40 years. I policed it for over 25 years. My wonderful
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amazing wife and I have raised our three daughters here. They went to an inner London primary school
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they went to a inner London state secondary school. None of them have ever been the victim of a crime
0:37
It would be disingenuous, it would be downright misleading to pretend that London has no problems
0:44
I've got 25 years of policing experience that tells you otherwise. But the way that it is being caricatured
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and you're right to point out that this is the current politics of the right
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it just it bears no resemblance to the city that i know and love what do you think they're trying to
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achieve those on the right who say this it's really simple and if it wasn't so serious it
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would almost be laughable they're trying to make people afraid and i was reminded um earlier and
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indeed tweeted it out this morning of a line from an aaron sorkin film and if i can briefly
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paraphrase it. Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you that whether it's reform or
1:26
J.D. Vance or whoever else, they are not the least bit interested in solving it
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They're interested in two things and two things only, making you afraid of it and telling you who
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to blame for it. You would include reform in that, would you? I absolutely would. Why? They're a
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political party. They see their country. They don't like some of the things they see in their
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country, they want to change it. What's so awful about that? I don't think they really are interested
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in changing it. I think they are interested in gaining personal, political, financial advantage
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from it. I've yet to hear a serious suggestion from anyone in reform about how to actually fix
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the very real problems that we're facing as a country. Do you, on the question of the experience
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that people have in their city, whether it's London or anywhere else, or, you know, major
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towns as well in our country where people live. Does it depend where you live? Does it depend
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how poor you are? Does it depend who you are, your ethnicity, your gender? There's all kinds
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of things that bear down on how likely you are to experience crime, aren't there? Yeah, and that's a really important point to make. And I think one of the very real issues
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facing London and one of the very real drivers of crime in this city and in so many others
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is poverty and inequality. And the simple fact is that the poorer your neighbourhood
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the more likely you are to experience or to be a victim of crime. That's a very real problem and that's not going to be fixed by a soundbite
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And that is because? It's generational. So there is all sorts of research out there from people far more qualified than me
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to inform us that says there is a direct correlation, indeed a causation between levels of poverty and levels of crime and that would certainly be borne
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out in all of my years of policing experience the poorer neighborhoods tend to be the higher crime
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neighborhoods how given the span of your time a quarter of a century working as a police officer
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in london tell talk to me about the role of drugs in the the quality of behavior on the streets and
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the types of crime and the, you know, the direction of travel of crime, because it changes things
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doesn't it, when drugs take hold of people? Yeah, gosh, we could spend the entirety of the rest of
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your show talking about just that. The problem is not so much the individual users of drugs
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Addiction is as much a health problem as is anything else and should be treated as such
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the problem is the trade that sits behind it and again there is an undoubted correlation
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between the drugs trade and violent criminality in particular there's no denying that
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weirdly just on my twitter feed here a tweet has just come through saying london is a hellhole latest and it a picture of a nice wooden table with a little cafe latte on it
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I think it looks like a cafe latte or a pleasant sunny day in London
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And, you know, many of us could send such a picture in London or in Liverpool or Manchester, wherever
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and say what a nice day we're having. But do we fool ourselves if we say, not here, it's okay here
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Because with crime, it's okay till it's not okay, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've always said in terms of policing, which like London has its critics, I'm not a blind apologist for the job I used to do. And neither am I a blind apologist for the city that is my home. Of course, any of us can be a victim of crime at any time. And it's no respecter of class or gender or generation or any other point of difference you might like to pull out
5:15
So there's no complacency in what I'm saying. The reason I feel so stirred about this, the reason I responded to Lewis's tweet, as I do, is I am deeply, profoundly opposed to the politics of division and fear
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I don't think whether it's J.D. Vance or reform as I've said before I don't think these people are
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serious about fixing these problems I think they're serious about taking advantage of them
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problem is though if people live in wherever they live if if what they see is a diminishing
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of the fabric of the community they live in we talked about this just yesterday I've certainly
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seen it in the community I live in. If you start to see that diminishing on a number of different
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fronts, and worse still, if it becomes very violent, or you or your children are affected
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by crime, violent crime, or county lines, gangs, or get into drugs, whatever it is
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you look to the supposedly non-divisive, mainstream, sensible politicians, and you say
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well, what are you doing about it? Oh, good, well, you're doing that, but it's not working
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is it? So is it any wonder people look to a party or a person who might be saying
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let's not let the scales fall from your eyes here. This is bad. There is really bad stuff going on
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And instead of us saying, but mostly it's okay, when it's bad, it's really bad. And it's really
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bad for the victims of it. Absolutely. And those are the voices that we should be listening to
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The voices of lived experience in the neighbourhoods that are being affected
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But do we? I'm not sure that our politicians do. I mean, I've never been a member of any political party and I never will be
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I have no interest in left and right, only in right and wrong. And, you know, Britain in general and London specifically are facing some very real challenges and problems
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And some of those are a direct consequence of the decimation of policing over the last 15 years
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And from 2010 to 2018, the previous government cut 44,000 officers and staff from policing in England and Wales alone
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So would your argument be that it's not that things are getting worse
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it's that the bad stuff that's always been there and always will be there
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it will change in nature, the bad stuff, but shorthand the bad stuff, you know
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The bad stuff that's always been there in cities and will always be there in cities has just been given too much room
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I think that's certainly a significant part of it. So you know the old phrase about nature
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abhorring a vacuum. You know one of the consequences of the loss of those and it was a cut and let's
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not pretend it was anything else. The cutting of those 44,000 officers and staff was the almost
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complete destruction of neighbourhood policing in this country and in my experience everything good
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in policing starts in local neighbourhoods. And it wasn't just the numbers that we lost
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it was generations of policing experience that went with it. And perhaps most importantly of all
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it was the relationships between the police and the local communities. Policing should never be something done to communities, it should always be done with
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And with that in mind though, those numbers, because you know they matter, you're right
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They not everything but they do matter It fair to say isn it that the loss of those 44 officers you know we in the foothills of this new government so we see what their moves on neighbourhood policing achieve
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But the numbers still don't add up, do they, when you take into account what was cut and what's being lost through natural wastage of people retiring and the like
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Absolutely. The numbers aren't being made up. No, not even close to it. And it's not just what we've lost, it's the fact that the population is growing
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nationwide as well as in London and also the fact that that you know policing is in such a
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challenging place at the moment that that we're losing quite a lot of officers actually not long
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after they've joined but certainly before they're due to retire so we still haven't even begun to
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repair the damage that was done. So it's interesting the response to Lewis's comments on the news
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agents on social media in particular that there was quite a pushback wasn't there against him
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well and you know there's been quite a pushback against my observations as well and and it's
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i mean i can't speak for lewis i can only speak for myself there's no attempt on my part uh and
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i hope that's apparent in what i'm saying today to deny the very real challenges that we face as
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a city, as a society. But my objection is to those who deliberately distort and misrepresent
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in order to stir up fear and division. That has nothing to do with fixing the very real
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problems that we face. I'm disgusted by his comments, you add on, you know, turning it into a far right problem
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I'm a London taxi driver. I see it every day. And crime is on the increase all the time
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What do you think? And London isn't safe. Phone robberies, bags being stolen
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people being ripped off left, right and centre. You know, it isn't a good city to be in at the moment
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What do you mean when you say ripped off? By all these rickshaw people and people being threatened
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Can't even wear a nice watch. can't have your mobile phones out there's signs there in Oxford Street in the pavement saying that
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you know this is a high crime zone you know the knife crimes the stabbings it's just it's unsafe
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London and I've been working in London for 25 30 years as a black taxi driver and to turn it into
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a far right problem I think can I just try and uh well not defend but just explain a bit more of
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what I think Lewis means when he says that. He's alluding to those politicians on the right
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who do use this as a battering ram against their opponents. And they do. You know the kind of
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people we're talking about, Les Anderson, Nigel Farage, just to name two. But what you're saying
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is that's too narrow a view of this. I'm just saying the problem's so big. It's so bad now
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the lack of policing you know even in mexico the tourism of mexico are telling people that come
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over from mexico of all places that if you're coming to london be careful because it's not safe
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well you say mexico of all places i had one of the best holidays of my life in mexico and i was
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in mexico city um for a week i was in a city called oaxaca further to the west and then at a
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coastal area so three very different areas went on a big hike in forests it was one of the best
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holidays I've ever had. Am I just like randomly lucky that I didn't get murdered on that
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trip? You know, we can all think like that about anywhere, can't we? The thing is, Sheila, the problem is
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I see it first hand. I see it on a daily basis, you know
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and it isn't a safe city. It really isn't a safe city. I don't
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even like my kids. I've got a 23-year-old boy that comes up to London. He's in London now
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I'm petrified. You know what I mean? And I'm brought up and growing up in the East End all my life
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Is it stabbing that frightens you? stabbings, robbery, you've only got to look at the wrong person
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you know, make the wrong comment, and you're in the wrong place
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You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I presume if you're a black cab driver
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you go all over the place. Are there hot spots, would you say
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Let me tell you something, Sheila, right? That Brixton was a problem and all that
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and taxi drivers wouldn go over to Brixton and all that and they were turning it into a race issue and everything Brixton that Brixton a very trendy area now You know And I don think Brixton any worse crime than central London like you said
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Chiswick. You know? But it's just, to hear these comments that London is safe
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You know? See, I'm not being funny. You would not want to be walking around on your own at 10 o'clock in Soho
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i've done it quite a lot actually well actually i'm not often on my own actually you know sometimes
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i am if i leave if i leave a group and i'm going one direction they're going the other i'll walk
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out onto piccadilly and get myself to the tube on my own 10 o'clock at night you feel totally safe
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largely because of the numbers of people around me if it was if it was me and two if it was me and
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two blokes and the moon i'd be more nervous than than a busy city i just think i just think london
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you know with the way the the lack of police in the lack of police stations you know sadiq khan
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is literally destroying london you know and in london's just not the same no more
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it really isn't the same no more and this is someone that sees it every day morning noon and
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night yeah and i'm not denying that what you are seeing why would i do that um but does that amount
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to you know the the end of the city no it's not the end of the city but the fact is that if you
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have an opinion or a view and you're you're trying to sort of say something honestly about the
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community or where you live or the society then you're being classed as a racist and that's why
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people are not saying nothing well and then when you look at people like Nigel Favage and things
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like that hang on again I don't think Lewis was saying it's racists doing this he was talking
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about it being a tool that the political far right not not the the far right as a national front
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stuff I'm talking about the political right um are using as a as a stick to beat their opponents
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with and that's a fact they are they're using oh cities are falling to pieces that they're using
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that and and in america as well why ain't labor doing anything for this city for this great city
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why does it take someone like nigel farage or reform to bring up these problems these problems
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are going on and everybody buries their head in the sand i don't think they do i mean i talk about
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these problems i've spoken about them with sadiq khan i've spoken about them with various counselors
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and mps and callers and guests and people who campaign against crime and people who work day
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nights to keep young kids out of crime talk about stabbing when no one's in denial about the problems
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in this city and in other cities but but does it help anyone if we just write the place off
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no we can't write the place off we need but the thing is we need people coming here and feeling
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safe and if there's not enough police on the streets then you're not going to get the tourists
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coming over from dubai from you know all these nice places that come over to this great city
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I had to call in, Sheila. I don't recognise what they're saying at all. I fell ill 18 years ago with a really nasty neurological condition
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and as a consequence I had to live in the thick of other people's mental health issues and drugs problems
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And I have never blamed it on the rest of London. I have never pointed everywhere else and said, look, it's everywhere, because it's not
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And I've got to tell you, I live in an area of Tottenham. We see some drugs problems
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Not a lot, really not a lot. And one of my neighbours on the other side of the street
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was so nice to some people who mistakenly tried to get into their house late that night
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thinking it was an Airbnb house. They shone. Two weeks later, I'm still really impressed with them
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They were the best of the best. They made sure they had everything they needed to make it to the right part of London, you know, and stuff like that
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They invited them in. These are people who tried to get into their house late at night
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They invited them in. They charged their phone up. There was quite a group of them
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They arranged the cab. They made sure they had the correct address and the cab company had the correct place this time
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They made sure they had the right money. They couldn't have been any better. And you're telling me that this is some crime ridden cesspit
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No way
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