Conservative’s mayoral contest ad showed New York not London

An advert in support of the Conservative’s London mayoral candidate that featured scenes from New York instead of the capital has been deleted.

The clip, posted on the party’s X (formerly Twitter) account, attacked London’s incumbent Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, and used footage of a stampede in a New York subway station, which Mr Khan criticised as “quite staggering”.

The advert, in support of Susan Hall, was quickly removed and replaced with a video where the New York scenes had been cut.

Ms Hall told the BBC the video had “nothing to do” with her mayoral campaign team and that she had not watched either version. A spokesperson for Ms Hall said the video had been created by Conservative Party headquarters.

The Conservative Party’s head office declined to comment.

Ms Hall is running against Mr Khan – and other candidates – in the London mayoral election on 2 May.

In the original black-and-white video, the scenes of a stampede at New York’s Penn Station in 2017 were overlaid with a US-accented narrator making alleged claims, including: “A 54% increase in knife crime since the Labour mayor seized power has the metropolis teetering on the brink of chaos.

“And in the chaos, people seek a desperate reprieve.”

Responding to the video’s claim that crime in the capital had risen during his time in office, Mr Khan said: “Because of government cuts over the last 14 years we’ve lost thousands of [police] officers.”

The mayor added that crime had fallen in a number of categories, including homicides, gun crime and burglaries since he first took office in 2016.

The video also warned of “squads of Ulez [Ultra Low Emmission Zone] enforcers dressed in black, faces covered with masks, terrorising communities at the beck and call of their Labour mayor master, who has implemented a tax on driving, forcing people to stay inside or go underground”.

Mr Khan said the Conservatives were being “unpatriotic” for “doing our city down”.

“It’s another example of my fear materialising, which is this election, from the Conservative Party, will be one where there’s misinformation, where there’s lies and, in this case, clearly videos that weren’t of this city, it was New York,” he said.

Ms Hall distanced herself from the video, telling BBC News she had not seen the first version, with the New York clip, or the reuploaded version.

Asked about the claims made and messaging in the video, she said: “I’m out listening to Londoners and all they are telling me is that they are concerned about the violence on our streets.”

With additional reporting by PA Media.

Tim Donovan, BBC London political editor

So was this a rookie error? A gaffe of major proportions?

Inserting footage of one global city into an ‘attack video’ about another?

Does it make a mockery of Susan Hall’s whole campaign in relation to crime?

Probably a little caution advised.

And whether or not you think the narrator’s intonation hilarious, what this has done is get people talking.

And not in a good way, potentially, if you are a supporter of Sadiq Khan.

Because it has made people think about crime and safety, and that may – even momentarily – get them thinking about whether it’s going in the right direction and enough is being done about it.

So in the digital sphere, stuff is not always exactly what it seems.