THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
On the evening of Tuesday, 1 April 2025, a pregnant woman walking near the home of London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan in Clapham, south London, noticed a suspicious holdall sitting by the kerbside. She kicked it. It didn’t move. Too heavy. She fetched her partner, scaffolder Jordan Griffiths, who carried it home and opened it — expecting coins, perhaps.
What he found instead was a cache of police-issue weapons: a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun capable of firing 800 rounds per minute, a Glock 17 pistol loaded with at least ten rounds, a Taser stun gun, and a quantity of ammunition.
He photographed them, laid them on his bed, and called the police.
Officers arrived within seven minutes. They were, by Mr Griffiths’ account, visibly shocked. They confirmed what he had already been told: the weapons belonged to one of the Mayor’s protection officers. Five armed officers from the Metropolitan Police’s dedicated protection unit are believed to have accidentally abandoned the holdall outside the property — on the same evening that gangs of youths were running riot just streets away in Clapham, setting fires, terrorising shoppers and confronting police.
The Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards launched an immediate investigation. All five officers were suspended from frontline duties pending its outcome. A spokesman for the Mayor called it “a very serious incident” and demanded the Met ensure it never happened again.
It is hard to disagree. But the incident raises questions that go well beyond the carelessness of a handful of protection officers.
The Scale of Khan’s Security Arrangements
Sadiq Khan does not receive ordinary mayoral protection. The level of security afforded to him is, by his own description, equivalent to that given to the Prime Minister and the King. A team of approximately 15 armed officers protects him around the clock, every day of the year. This is an arrangement usually reserved for a handful of the most senior figures in British public life — not the Mayor of a city he regularly describes as one of the safest on earth.
The cost of this protection falls on the public purse. The precise annual figure has never been fully disclosed, but a round-the-clock team of 15 armed officers represents a substantial and ongoing commitment of Metropolitan Police resources — resources drawn from the same force that Khan has repeatedly accused of being under-funded and overstretched.
Safe for Whom, Exactly?
For years, Sadiq Khan has insisted that London is not merely a safe city but one of the safest major cities in the world. “I’m reassured that we are one of the safest global cities in the world — if not the safest global cities in the world,” he told Sky News. More recently, he declared London “far safer than every city in the United States.”
These are bold claims. They sit uneasily against official data showing a 5.7 per cent year-on-year rise in violent crime in London as of 2024, over 1,100 firearm offences recorded in the year to March 2025, and a wave of organised disorder on Clapham’s high street — which, to repeat, occurred on the very same evening the weapons bag was abandoned outside his home.
The obvious question, asked by many Londoners in the days following the incident, is a simple one: if London is so safe, why does its Mayor require fifteen armed police officers protecting him at all times? The answer Khan has consistently given is that the threat to him is personal, specific, and rooted in who he is — not where he lives.
The Colour and Faith Argument
In 2021, at a Labour Party conference fringe event, Khan offered a candid explanation for his security arrangements. He said he required the protection because of “the colour of his skin and the god he worships.” It is a formulation he has returned to on multiple occasions. The implication is clear: he is targeted because he is a British Muslim man in a position of power, and that targeting is driven by racism and religious hatred.
Khan has received documented threats from far-right extremists. Britain First, for example, threatened in 2016 to take “direct action” against Khan where he “lives, works and prays.” These are real threats from real people motivated, at least in part, by anti-Muslim bigotry.
But the picture is considerably more complicated than Khan’s framing suggests — and that complication is politically inconvenient for him.
Threatened by His Own Faith Community
According to a source with detailed knowledge of Khan’s security arrangements, speaking to The Guardian, the threat to the Mayor from Islamic extremists is assessed to be as high as the threat from the far right. Khan is not targeted by Islamists because of his faith. He is targeted despite it — or more precisely, because of how he practises it. As an MP, he voted in favour of same-sex marriage. As Mayor, he has championed LGBTQ+ rights and publicly condemned Islamist terrorism in the strongest terms following the 2017 attacks in London and Manchester.
For hardline Islamists, a Muslim who holds elected office in a western democracy, endorses gay rights and refuses to excuse jihadist violence is not a fellow believer to be celebrated — he is a traitor to be punished.
This is an inconvenient truth. It means that the very identity Khan invokes to explain his security needs — his Muslim faith — is also the identity that makes him a target for some of the most serious threats he faces. To frame his protection purely as a consequence of Islamophobia is to tell only half the story.
The Grooming Gangs Question
There is a broader context to public scepticism about Khan’s record that cannot be ignored when assessing his credibility on matters of safety and community trust.
In January 2025, Conservative London Assembly Member Susan Hall pressed Khan, repeatedly and directly, on whether London had grooming gangs operating in the manner documented in Rotherham, Rochdale and dozens of other towns across England. She asked the question nine times. Each time, Khan responded by asking her to define what she meant — despite the issue having dominated national headlines for weeks. He deflected to county lines drug gangs. He expressed uncertainty about her terminology. He did not answer.
A proposal by Conservative Assembly members to fund an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in London — at a cost of £4.49 million — was voted down in February 2025, with Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat members united in opposition. The motion was defeated 16 votes to 9.
In the months that followed, social workers, safeguarding charities, survivors and policing experts lined up to contradict Khan’s position. Child sexual abuse by gangs was described as “ubiquitous” in London and an “epidemic tethered to organised crime.” The Met Commissioner himself acknowledged a “steady flow” of ongoing multi-offender child sexual exploitation investigations. A petition signed by over 40,000 people calling for Khan’s resignation over his handling of the issue was delivered to City Hall.
Conclusion
The bag of guns left on a Clapham street is, in one sense, a straightforward story of human error. Five officers made a serious mistake. Proper procedures were not followed. An investigation is underway, and that is appropriate.
But it is also a lens through which to examine a series of larger contradictions. A Mayor who insists his city is among the safest in the world employs a protection detail the size of a small military unit. A Mayor who attributes his security needs to prejudice against his faith faces documented threats from within that same faith community. A Mayor who claims to prioritise the safety of Londoners has, by the account of professionals working in child protection, consistently evaded accountability on one of the gravest safeguarding failures of the modern era.
Mr Griffiths, the scaffolder who found the weapons, asked the officers who came to collect them whether there might be a reward. They told him they would give him a bag of sweets.
Perhaps that is the most fitting symbol of this whole affair: a public left to stumble across the consequences of institutional failure, offered nothing in return, and expected to be grateful.
Recerwnces
1.https://www-theguardian-com.translate.goog/politics/2024/feb/27/sadiq-khan-faces-death-threats-from-islamist-extremists-source-says?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=ar&_x_tr_hl=ar&_x_tr_pto=tc
2.https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/sadiq-khan-death-threats-disasters-terror-attacks-ptsd-DWzYHz_2/
3.https://www.indiaweekly.biz/sadiq-khan-says-frequent-death-threats-left-him-with-mental-trauma/
4.https://www.citylondonnews.co.uk/news/london/20240319/71886/london-is-safer-compared-with-any-global-city-says-london-mayor
5.https://britbrief.co.uk/politics/westminster/sadiq-khan-london-among-worlds-safest-cities.html
6.https://www.gbnews.com/politics/sadiq-khan-armed-security-bag-guns-home-clapham
7https://britbrief.co.uk/politics/westminster/armed-police-leave-bag-of-guns-outside-london-mayors-home.html
