London’s homicide rate is at a record low as mayor says it disproves Trump's 'dystopian' claims

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LONDON (AP) — London’s murder rate fell in 2025 to its lowest level in decades, officials said Monday. Mayor Sadiq Khan said the figures disprove claims spread by U.S. President Donald Trump and others on the political right that crime is out of control in Britain’s capital.

Police recorded 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the fewest since 2014. The Metropolitan Police force said the rate by population is the lowest since comparable records began in 1997, at 1.1 homicides for every 100,000 people.

That compares to 1.6 per 100,000 in Paris, 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin, the force said.

“There are some politicians and commentators who’ve been spamming our social media with an endless stream of distortions and untruths, painting an image of a dystopian London,” Khan told The Associated Press. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”

Trump, who has been directing insults at Khan for a decade, said in September that crime in the city is “through the roof.” He has called Khan a “stone-cold loser,” a “nasty person” and – in front of the U.N. General Assembly in September – a “terrible, terrible mayor.” Trump has also claimed without foundation that Khan wants to bring Sharia, or Islamic law, to London.

City officials say a combination of targeted policing aimed at organized crime and a violence reduction unit that aims to stop young people from getting involved with gangs have helped reduce violent crime.

Declining rates for murder and other violent crime are only part of London's crime story. Many Londoners have firsthand experience of phone-snatching or have witnessed the surge in shoplifting documented by the Office for National Statistics.

“It feels like the minor crimes have gone up,” said Vijay Pankhania, walking his dog outside London’s city hall beside the River Thames. “Things like stealing mobile phones from people – I’ve seen that loads of times around here.”

The Crime Survey for England and Wales, which asks people about their experience of crime rather than relying on police figures, found overall crime rose by 7% in the year to March 2025 from the previous 12 months, though it remains significantly lower than in 2017.

Arguments that London is a crime-plagued dystopia under Labour Party mayor Khan have mushroomed on social media sites, including the Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, and are echoed by opposition politicians, often tied to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views.

“There are certain politicians, certain commentators who have been using London as a punchbag” to fit their own political agenda, Khan told the AP in an interview.

“London is, in my view, the greatest city in the world. We are liberal, we are progressive, we are diverse, and we are incredibly successful,” he said.

Khan said London is a world capital for tourism, sports and culture, with “more international students than any city in the world, a record amount of foreign direct investment. Last year, more Americans came to London to study or to work or to invest since records began,” he said.

“Last year, more Americans came to London to study or to work or to invest since records began,” he said, calling London “the antithesis” of everything represented by politicians like Trump or Vice President JD Vance, who has expressed the belief that Europe is being overwhelmed by immigrants.

Khan called such views “nonsense,” but expressed concern that people unfamiliar with London, whose "sole source of information is a social media feed ... may wrongly believe that this dystopian vision of London is true.”

Mark J. Hill, Lecturer in Cultural Computation at King's College London, who studies the growth of social media posts about violence in London, said there was evidence that online discourse was shaping offline behavior.

“Posts where people are asking if it’s safe to visit London might be bots, but are just as likely to be real people who are concerned about coming to London," Hill said. “These narratives are impacting their decisions about where they might go on holiday. … That’s, in my opinion, one of the really problematic things about it.”

“There is no magic bullet at the moment for making people aware of what is statistically the case and what is misinformation or a misunderstanding of the actual reality," he said.