When Sadiq Khan was elected Mayor of London in 2016, he promised to be a mayor for all Londoners. He committed to working hard to improve life for everyone in the city, regardless of background, and to ensure that London’s opportunities were shared more widely. Nine years later, the gap between those promises and the reality on the ground has become difficult to ignore.

The Communications-First Approach

One of the clearest indicators of Khan’s priorities lies in how his administration has allocated resources. The mayor’s office for policing and crime significantly increased its spending on communications and press functions during his tenure. Across the Greater London Authority and its bodies, the number of dedicated communications staff grew substantially.

This expansion reflects a deliberate choice: to invest in shaping the narrative around his leadership rather than focusing resources solely on service delivery. The result has been a carefully managed public image of a progressive, competent mayor operating under difficult circumstances, with failures consistently attributed to external factors such as central government policy or austerity.

Knife Crime: A Tripling Under Khan’s Watch

Nowhere is the gap between rhetoric and results more stark than on knife crime. When Khan took office in 2016, the Metropolitan Police recorded approximately 4,400 knife crime offences per year. By 2023, that figure had risen to over 12,000.

Khan’s response has followed a consistent pattern: acknowledge the problem, express sympathy for victims, reference broader social causes such as poverty and cuts to youth services, announce a new initiative or task force, and then move on when results fail to materialise. The Violence Reduction Unit, launched in 2019 with significant funding and publicity, did not deliver the promised reduction in knife crime. Independent evaluations of its impact have been far more modest than the public claims made about the programme.

Transport: Rising Costs and Structural Weakness

Transport for London has operated under Khan in a state of repeated financial crisis. The organisation received multiple emergency bailouts from central government during the pandemic years, running into billions of pounds. These came with conditions on fares, staffing, and governance that the mayor publicly opposed while privately accepting.

Housing: The Widest Gap Between Promise and Delivery

A Consistent Pattern of Governance

Across these areas, a clear method is visible. Commitments are made at a high level of ambition. When delivery falls short, the gap is explained through external factors. New initiatives are announced to replace the ones that have not worked as claimed. Communications resources are used to maintain a positive framing, while critical evaluations remain buried in official archives.

This approach has allowed Khan to sustain a reputation as a progressive leader despite outcomes that have fallen well short of his original promises on safety, transport, and housing.

What Effective Governance Would Require

Londoners who supported Khan in 2016 and 2021 did so in the belief that he would deliver meaningful improvements. They were entitled to expect honesty about what could realistically be achieved and accountability when targets were missed.

A different approach would involve setting deliverable targets, publishing honest evaluations of programmes, reforming inefficient spending practices, and treating residents of outer London as equal constituents rather than an afterthought. It would mean prioritising actual outcomes over the management of public perception.

After nine years, London has been governed by a leader who mastered the modern political skill of controlling the story while the city itself has paid the price in rising knife crime, strained transport finances, and a persistent failure to meet housing targets. The question now is whether London will get a mayor who chooses to govern differently.