God knows I have my reservations, but despite them all, I'll vote for Sadiq

IT’S tough living in London these days. Knife crime is completely out of control, rents have skyrocketed, shoplifting has somehow been normalised, council tax is higher than ever and confidence in the Met is at a record low.

- Annavan Praagh

As we come to the end of Sadiq Khan’s second term as mayor of London, it’s hard not to feel that a lot of things have got a lot worse.

As the mother of a young son, I find the knife crime epidemic particularly alarming, and it’s far from clear what the strategy is to end it. Ask most people and they’ll say it’s the thing they most worry about, and many families I know are forming a stampede away from the capital in part because of it. As the police and crime commissioner with the power to set the direction of the Met, I would have liked to see a lot more leadership from Sadiq about this. We know he’s virulently anti-stop-andsearch, but what exactly is his plan? Up to this week, he has seemed allergic to talking about it.

Meanwhile, in the past three years, he has spent £4.5 million on posters with messages like “carry a water bottle when it’s hot” and his widely mocked “maaate” campaign. Not to mention the £6.3 million he spent on completely pointlessly re-naming the Overground lines — an incredible waste of money when you think how many people are struggling with their bills. I find his manifesto claims that he will eliminate homelessness by 2030 and make the Thames clean enough to swim in frankly disingenuous.