Nigel Farage claims Sadiq Khan is ‘deluded’ if he thinks London is the best city in world – UK politics live | Politics
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Farage claims Khan ‘deluded’ if he thinks London best city in world
Q: Do you agree with Sadiq Khan that London is the greatest city in the world?
Cunningham says people in London do not feel safe.
And Farage says, if Khan thinks London is the best city in the world, he is “deluded”.
He claims that Khan has lost sight of how London is perceived abroad.
Key events
Farage says Zack Polanski, the new Green party leader, is “clearly a lunatic”.
But he says, if you oppose drugs laws and support open borders, “then the Greens are clearly for you”.
Farage claims further restriction on drink-driving ‘wholly unnecessary’
Q: [From the Telegraph] Will you support the Telegraph’s Save our Pubs campaign, set up in response to the government’s road safety strategy?
Farage jokes about saving many pubs over the years. He goes on to attack the government’s plans.
This is the drink drive thing is absolutely ridiculous, wholly unnecessary.
We’ve been where we’ve been since 1967. It’s worked pretty effectively.
You actually look at road casualty figures, safety figures in this country, through whatever cause, we are now incredibly safe on our roads, incredibly safe, much safer than France, way safer than Germany.
And we’ve actually reached a level on accidents beneath which it’s almost impossible to go, because there will always be human error of some kind.
He also criticises the plan to make young people wait up to six months from taking their theory exam until they can sit the driving test. (See 9.32am.)
Reform UK’s candidate for London mayor says Met commissioner should have to quit over grooming gangs record
Q: Is Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to blame for the state of crime in London?
Cunningham says Rowley claimed there was not a problem with grooming gangs in London. He was wrong. They ended up reveiwing 9,000 cases, she says. She says on the basis of that Rowley has to go “because on my watch you don’t you don’t get 9000 grooming cases wrong”.
Farage says the chief constable of West Midlands police should go first. He says his performance at the Commons home affairs committee yesterday was “absolutely abject”. And he pays tribute to Nick Timothy, the Conservative MP, for the way he was campaigned for the WMP chief constable, Craig Guildford, to go for supposedly misrepresenting the evidence used by the police to justify the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Villa Park match last year.
Farage says era of rules-based international order ‘out of date’, and move to ‘world of national self-interest’ could be positive
Q: Do you think it is a good thing if the rules-based international order no long exists?
Farage says that, after the horrors of world war two and the Nazis, he understands why people wanted to put new arrangements in place, including the European convention on human rights.
But he says so many of these institutions are now “hopelessly out of date”.
He goes on:
We are moving into a very new world of national self-interest, where countries will put their own national self-interest first. And that, by the way, will not be a bad thing, provided those countries are democratically run and have accountable leaderships.
The danger actually is not the existence of nation states. The danger is when nation states are not democratic or the leaders are not accountable.
Farage also says he cannot think of an example of two mature, functioning democracies going to war against each other.
He says the concept of international law may be “frightfully popular in Islington and Hampstead, and amongst many members of this government”. But it it now no longer fit for purpose in the way originally envisaged.
Cunningham implies she would scrap congestion charge in London
Q: What would you do about the congestion charge and the Ulex charge?
Cunningham says she does not think a war on motorists helps anyone. She says she would scrap this because “I want a war on criminals, not a war on motorists”.
(It is not clear from her answer if she is saying she would get rid of both the congestion charge and Ulez, or just Ulez. She implied both, but she was not specific.)
Farage dismisses claims that he racially abused fellow pupils at school as ‘complete made-up fantasies’
Q: [From ITV] Before Christmas we interviewed people who say that they were subject to racist bullying by you at school. Will you apologise to them?
Farage says:
I don’t apologise for things that are complete made-up fantasies.
He says these claims were made by people with “obvious political motivation”.
Q: What is your message to Keir Starmer ahead of his visit to China?
Farage says he is worried about the Chinese Communist party infiltating this government, even right to the top. He says Starmer should tell the Chinese that his government will only trust people who keep their word. The Chinese did not do that over Hong Kong, he says.
Q: You said you wanted to restore London to its former glory. What period are you talking about?
Cunningham claims, when she was growing up in London, it was safer.
She says she knew the local police officer. And her teacher lived next door. Now a teacher could not afford to live there.
She says her husband had his computer stolen. There was a tracker on it. But the police were not interested in looking for it because they said they did not have the resources.
Farage says he can see the case for a deal US deal with Greenland that would take into account mineral resources as well as defence.
He says he thinks there will ultimately be “some kind of economic agreement”.
Farage says Trump right about need for big Nato base in Greenland – but using force to seize it would be ‘outrageous’
Q: [From the BBC] What do you think of Donald Trump’s threats of Greenland.
Farage says he agrees with Starmer that the fate of Greenland must be decided by Greenland and Denmark, not the US.
But he goes on:
What I will say is this. There are some genuine security concerns around Greenland and that becomes ever more relevant with a retraction of the ice caps as we head towards the North Pole. There is a strong feeling in British intelligence circles, and many in Nato, that there needs to be a significant Nato base located directly on the north of Greenland.
At the moment, it would appear that is something Greenland is not particularly keen to do.
As you know, since 2009, Greenland has been moving further and further away from Danish control and is pretty close to establishing its own level of independence and the fear is that they will fall prey to very large amounts of Chinese money and Chinese influence.
So, as ever, with things that Trump says, they may sound outrageous, and in the case of potentially using force, they are. But there is point behind it.
Farage claims Khan ‘deluded’ if he thinks London best city in world
Q: Do you agree with Sadiq Khan that London is the greatest city in the world?
Cunningham says people in London do not feel safe.
And Farage says, if Khan thinks London is the best city in the world, he is “deluded”.
He claims that Khan has lost sight of how London is perceived abroad.
Farage dismisses Starmer’s plan for Ukraine, claiming UK not in position to put boots on ground there
Q: [From the BBC] What do you think of the plan to put troops on the ground in Ukraine?
Farage says:
Boots on the ground with kit. What boots? What kit? I mean, we might be able to go for 6 or 8 weeks. We could talk about a modern day reincarnation of the British Army of the Rhine. Forget it. We are in no position to do it.
Despite all the promises that will be made on defence spending, absolutely none of them have happened so far, and there’s no particular indication that they will.
Farage also says that, at the press conference in Paris yesterday, he was struck by how Keir Starmer could not speak for long without looking at this note. He says Starmer is a man who is “drowning” polticallly.
Cunningham says, as mayor, she would make the safety of Londoners her priority.
And that means visible policing, zero, I mean zero, tolerance for crime, real consequences. There’ll be a new sheriff in town.
And I’ll be launching an all out war on crime.
I will set clear, high-level priorities for the Met to focus on tackling knife crime, drugs, robbery, rape.
And I will task the Met Police with targeting, hunting and prosecuting rape gangs in London.
Cunningham criticises Khan for describing some of his critics as racist. She says:
[Khan] attacks anyone who says London’s dangerous. He calls them far-right, racist. He ludicrously says that criticism of his record is because he’s Muslim and we are all Islamophobic. Frankly, it’s an insult to victims and to Londoners.
(Some of the people who criticise Khan undoubtedly are racist. He has a particularly high level of police protection because of the threats he faces from extremists.)
Cunningham claims Sadiq Khan has created a London ‘where criminals operate freely’
Laila Cunningham, who is a former CPS prosecutor and a Muslim, and who was born in Egypt, is speaking now.
She says she has raised her seven children in London. And those are seven reasons why she is standing, she says.
She says crime is going up.
Let’s just go through some stats. Knife crime in London is up 68% since 2016. Robbery is up by more than 50% during that same period. More than 100 phones are stolen every single year. And that’s just those we know about. We are living, ladies and gentlemen, through a rape epidemic.
You see, crime for me, is not theoretical like some of the journalists who say I’m scared. My family has experienced it many times. In fact, one time my kids were targeted by gangs in balaclavas who people say don’t exist. Day after day, near us, in broad daylight. We were all terrified. I turned to the police. Naturally. I was told there were not enough resources.
Cunningham says, in this case, she followed the gangs herself and took photos. The press called her a vigilante mum, she says.
She says women in particular don’t feel safe.
Why would they? There’s no police, and hardly any rape offences are prosecuted.
I speak to women who’ve been raped who have been told by the police, I’m sorry, there’s not enough evidence.
Cunningham says Sadiq Khan has created a city “where criminals operate freely”. And he does not take responsibility for it, she claims.
