Brexit Boss Nigel Farage has blasted Sadiq Khan’s reasoning for firing Met Police Chief Cressida Dick for not being “woke enough” rather than for her abysmal record on crime in London.
Nigel Farage has called out the Labour Party’s leftist Mayor of London Sadiq Khan over his decision to only sack Cressida Dick now over her perceived failure to “root out the racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, discrimination and misogyny” Khan claims still exists in the Metropolitan Police, rather than years ago for her abysmal record on violent crime in London.
“The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan had been pretty critical of her [Dick] over the last few days, but interestingly he wasn’t critical because knife crime is out of control, he wasn’t critical because rape and sexual assault is out of control and convictions are miserably low, he wasn’t unhappy with her because of the rise of gang violence”, Farage said.
London has suffered from a serious spike in crime that has coincided with Khan’s time in office since 2016, a period of time largely aligned with Dick’s as Met Commissioner from 2017. The trend saw a crime climax in 2021 – a record year for youth murder with 30 under-18s killed.
“No, he [Khan] was unhappy with her, particularly because of what some police officers at Charing Cross station had said on a WhatsApp chat group”, Farage continued in a video released on his social media on Friday.
Khan and his allies have accused the Metropolitan police — quite possibly correctly — of having a dysfunctional internal culture, most recently highlighted by leaked WhatsApp and Facebook chats from Met officers where officers wrote messages such as, “f*** you bender”, “I would happily rape you”, “if I was single I would happily chloroform you”, and one officer even bragged about hitting his girlfriend and said hitting women “makes them love you more”.
While some individuals may find this language “vile and awful”, Farage suggested others may see it as police officers engaging in a “very, very dark form of humour” as a means of letting off steam after “doing a ghastly job” where “they’re seeing the worst of humanity every single day”, and it may be behaviour that people “who work on the frontlines” sometimes display.
However, while Farage did concede that the language “either way” was not “very pretty”, he did emphasise that while words can be “very hurtful”, it is incomparable “to the rise of crime on London’s streets”.
Farage then lambasted Khan saying Dick was only chucked because too many police officers were saying “unpleasant things”, and went on to suggest she was sacked because she wasn’t “PC” or “woke enough for the Mayor of London”.
The irony of the first female and openly gay London Police Chief not being “woke enough”, was not lost on Farage who highlighted that during the BLM riots of 2020 — where Churchill’s statue was vandalised and police were attacked — it was officers under Dick’s command who were “virtually encouraged to take the knee” to the Marxist group that wished to “defund and close down the police force”.
Dame Cressida Dick was essentially forced to step down after Khan placed her “on notice” last week after the content of the police chats emerged, saying in her resignation that “it is clear that [the Mayor] no longer has sufficient confidence in my leadership to continue”.
The Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel seemed more focussed in her view on London policing, however, writing in the city’s freesheet newspaper the Evening Standard that “I will select the right Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police”. While remarking that Londoners should “Be in no doubt that a new leader must tackle these institutional issues”, the minister also emphasised that the new leader would also be expected to tackle crime, something which has otherwise been absent from the discussion around Dick’s performance of late.
Patel wrote in her article that:
I will appoint a Commissioner who will deliver results for the public that our police serve and represent. Beating crime, preventing crime, protecting our citizens, our streets and communities at a time when this Government is investing record sums into the police, is paramount.
And above all that’s what I – and the public across the country – will want from the country’s most senior police officer: someone focused on the basics of reducing violence in the city, tackling the abuse of women and girls, ridding our streets of drugs, knives and weapons, saving lives and protecting the public from the those who wish to do them harm.
Patel as Home Secretary will have the ultimate say in who becomes the new Met Police Chief, but she will consult with Sadiq Khan before making her decision.
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