London’s leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan, will be honoured with a knighthood despite his limited accomplishments and failure to tackle crime.
It will be ‘Sir Sadiq’ for the left-wing mayor after he was included in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 New Year Honours list, the first batch of people who will be honoured as such by the recently installed leader.
Commenting on his elevation, Khan said that he was “truly humbled to have received a knighthood in the King’s New Year’s Honours.”
“I couldn’t have dreamed when growing up on a council estate in south London that I’d one day be Mayor of London. It’s the honour of my life to serve the city I love,” he added.
Khan, who took over from Boris Johnson as the Mayor of London in 2016, is now the longest-serving mayor since the position was created in 2000. He has frequently been criticised for focussing heavily on woke social issues while crime rates have increased under his watch.
This trend continued last year, which saw a 20 per cent increase in knife crime offences, rising to 14,626, nearly 2,500 more than the previous year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported.
Khan is perhaps best known for his public feud with incoming President Donald Trump, previously accusing the American leader of using “xenophobia, racism, and ‘otherness’ as an electoral tactic” and called for a state visit to be cancelled. In response, Trump famously branded Khan a “stone-cold loser“.
Since it was first rumoured, the decision to knight Khan has been controversial. A petition launched earlier this month against the idea gained over 200,000 signatures.
The organisers said: “A knighthood is an honour reserved for citizens who’ve contributed significantly to their communities or professions. It’s a recognition of service that deserves the utmost respect, and as such, should not be bestowed on Sadiq Khan, who has failed to uphold his duty to our city and its inhabitants.
“We strongly urge the relevant authorities not to knight Sadiq Khan. It’s time we held our leaders accountable.”
Tory MP Bob Blackman joined the chorus of critics who disagreed with the move, telling the Daily Mail it amounted to a “reward for failure.”
“He is a disaster in London. If you look at every single target he’s set himself – on housing, on crime – he’s missed them every time. He is a total failure, which is clearly a position he has in common with the Government,” the MP added.
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