London should learn from Trump, not lambaste him

In rubbishing the visit of US President Donald Trump, London Mayor Sadiq Khan not only forgot his manners and his station, but also the fundamentals of the job he too was elected to do, writes James Morrow.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, no one will ever have any doubt where they stand in the eyes of the current American president.

Take Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, who took to social media this week to slam the President on the eve of his visit to the UK.

Trump’s response?

“He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me … In any event, I look forward to being a great friend to the United Kingdom, and am looking very much forward to my visit. Landing now”, the President tweeted as Air Force One made its final approach.

Fasten your seatbelts, indeed.

Trump didn’t mince his words when tweeting about London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Picture: AP/Evan Vucci

But as entertaining as Trump’s feud with the London mayor is, there is a serious point to this. Two, actually.

Firstly, the fact is Donald Trump actually knows cities and what good and bad governance looks like. Before he went into national politics he was a major player in New York City, in the bad old days before Rudy Giuliani cleaned the place up.

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And London, it’s safe to say, is looking like it has seen better days. Under Sadiq Khan, crime — particularly knife crime — is way up and the police seem unable to get a handle on the problem; the rising gap between rich and poor is making the place look more and more feudal, and the best Khan can do to distract from all this is hope his anti-Trump video goes viral.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has wasted no time in sharing his thoughts on President Donald Trump. Picture: Ben Stansall/AFP

Second, without going through the tedium of dissecting Mayor Khan’s video, since when did local government types get bored picking up the trash and decide they wanted to try their hand at playing foreign minister?

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Sydney, of course, has seen its fair share of councillors who imagine themselves one day stepping up to receive the Nobel Prize for bringing about world peace.

Remember the old Marrickville Council’s 2011 attempt to inject itself into the Middle East peace process by backing in the anti-Israel (and some would say anti-Semitic) “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” scheme?

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Look around the world and the phenomenon is everywhere.

In New York, Mayor Bill De Blasio (who has also done “a terrible job” according to Trump’s Twitter account) has decided to forget about fighting the city’s out of control rat problem to take a tilt at the presidency. When a local magazine tried to find a single New Yorker who supported his candidacy, they came up all but empty-handed.

President Donald Trump and Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed a State Banquet at Buckingham Palace on Monday evening. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/WPA/Getty

In 2016, the Washington Post trumpeted how the rise of left-wing mayors in London, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere would counter what the author in typically breathless style called “the tide of right-wing nationalism”.

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Ignored in all this is that there is an inverse relationship between the international activism of a municipality on the one hand and the pleasantness of the place for locals on the other.

It’s almost as if some mayors find it easier to spend their time looking for the easy headline telling the media what they want to hear than to deal with crime and transport and public health.

They should watch their backs, lest at the next election someone promises to make New York, or London, or Chicago great again.

James Morrow is opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph and co-host of Outsiders on Sky News.