The mayor told POLITICO he is leading a “one team endeavor” involving embassies, the Met police and business leaders to counter concerns.
Graham Lanktree
London is pushing back in “a coordinated, one team endeavor: central government, regional government, local government, private sector, public sector working together, playing tag to talk up our great city,” Khan said.
Susan Langley — the leader of the City of London Corporation, the governing body that runs the capital’s financial district — has joined Khan in Japan this week to help shift the narrative. Langley is “coordinating on tackling disinformation on London” alongside Khan, said a spokesperson for the City of London Corporation.
If a distorted view of the capital is broadcast across the world “it is an economic issue,” Langley told large corporate investors and diplomats — including those from Oman, Qatar and Bahrain — during a black-tie Mansion House dinner early this month. London is one of the safest cities in the world, she said. “We cannot let others write our story.”
As Khan tours Asia with a trade mission of more than 30 London firms — including transcription app Trint, music collaboration software firm Bonza Music and identity verification platform Sumsub — he is planning to “bust those myths and to rebut some of these falsehoods about our city.”
He is touting new police data showing that mobile phone thefts have nearly halved in central London, the rate of homicides per capita fell to the lowest rate in London’s history in 2025 and that teen homicides are the lowest this century.
“I’m not saying London is perfect. We do have challenges we’re responding to,” Khan said, but he points to the fact that the city won the 2026 World City Prize — recognizing outstanding achievement in urban development and strategic leadership — in March, that something is going right.
