Protestors have disrupted a speech by London mayor Sadiq Khan to the left-wing Fabian Society, attempting to subject him to a citizen’s arrest.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here today to make a non-violent, peaceful citizen’s arrest,” said a man who opened the protest by standing up and reading a statement, according to Sky News.
Surrounded by security, they declared: “We stand under common law jurisdiction. If you touch us, you’ll be done for common assault. Please stand back, do not touch us.”
They are reported to have been motivated by Khan’s continued efforts to sabotage Britain’s exit from the European Union and by his outspoken opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump visiting the country. One carried a small American flag.
Khan’s speech was delayed by some 15 minutes before the group was ejected, after which he sneered at them as “very stable geniuses” — a reference to one of President Trump’s recent tweets.
The protesters seemed unperturbed, telling reporters they were “heading to the pub”.
London’s first Muslim mayor has been under increasing pressure in recent months as his city has been rocked by terrorist attacks and a wave of violent crime, and he has increasingly retreated into pronouncements on international affairs which fall far outside his remit.
Despite claims by Khan in March 2017 that London is “the safest global city in the world, and one of the safest cities in the world,” the latest crime statistics show youth homicides are up by an astonishing 70 per cent.
Total homicides are up by 27.1 per cent, serious youth violence 19 per cent, robbery 33.4 per cent, and burglaries 18.7 per cent, among a host of other double-digit rises.
Figures like these are thanks in no small part to Khan diverting resources into controversial projects such as his online hate crime hub, and his determination to “do everything in my power to cut stop and search” by police — which he considered problematic due to its supposedly disproportionate use against ethnic minorities.
He is now changing course on stop and search and seeking to increase its use “significantly”, following a surge in knife crime and London being crowned the world’s acid attack capital.
The mayor also recently admitted that around 200 former Islamic State fighters are at large in London, and that most are not being monitored.
Months of headlines such as these culminated in Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam calling out the mayor for his long record of failures in an interview with Sky News which has gone viral, blasting: “To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, London’s turning into a shithole under Sadiq Khan.”
The protestors at Khan’s speech told Sky News political correspondent Laura Bundock that politicians are “employed by us, the people” and “should do as we say”, but had “broken their oaths of office”. They also accused the Fabian Society which was hosting the mayor of “subverting” the constitution.
The hugely influential political society, which is committed to achieving a classless, socialist state by stealth rather than revolution, has had its share of controversies since its founding in the 1880s.
Playwright George Bernard Shaw, arguably its most famous leader, once remarked that, as Socialists, the movement had “nothing to do with liberty”, and that democracy was “incompatible with Socialism”. He also described Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin as the “greatest statesman of Europe,” and called his successor Stalin “a good Fabian”.
Leading Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, too, who are often praised in left-wing circles for laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state, were also Soviet apologists, and dismissed reports of the mass starvation of millions of Ukrainians as fantasy when it was exposed by Welsh journalist Gareth Jones.
Every Labour prime minister, from Ramsay MacDonald to Gordon Brown, has been a Fabian Society member.
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