EGN NEWS DESK
It was a typical political assault advert. “London: a metropolis steeped in historical past,” a narrator says, as grim string music performs. “But tonight its historic streets bear witness to a special story. A story not of kings and queens, however of crime and desperation.”
Accompanying the advert’s bleak, American-accented narration had been dour black-and-white pictures, together with a shadowy determine strolling by an alley, a younger woman trying sadly out a window and frightened commuters operating by a practice station.
But there was an issue. Those terrified folks dashing to security? They weren’t in London. They had been in Penn Station in New York. In 2017.
The advert, initially posted Monday on social media, was designed to persuade Londoners to vote for Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for mayor, over the incumbent, Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party.
“I feel it’s unpatriotic all the time slagging off the capital metropolis,” Mr. Khan informed a BBC News reporter. “But I’m afraid it’s one other instance of my concern materializing, which is that this election from the Conservative Party will likely be one the place there’s disinformation, the place there’s lies, and on this case clearly video that wasn’t of our metropolis however of New York.”
Ms. Hall didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The mistaken footage was recognized as coming from a stampede that occurred at Penn Station in April 2017 amid mistaken experiences of gunfire. No gunshots had been fired, CNN reported on the time. People panicked on the sound of cops utilizing a stun gun.
Ms. Hall has hammered the crime subject within the marketing campaign, which can finish with the election on May 2. “Crime has gotten uncontrolled underneath Sadiq Khan. This should change,” she mentioned Monday.
While statistics present that crime has trended reasonably upward in London since Mr. Khan was elected in 2016, somebody in London continues to be much less prone to be a criminal offense sufferer than the common for Britain as an entire. (For that matter, regardless of that second of panic at Penn Station and up to date extremely publicized instances, main crime is falling in New York as properly, police information reveals.)
The London-born Mr. Khan turned the primary Muslim and first particular person of shade to turn out to be mayor of London when he was elected with 57 p.c of the vote in 2016. He was re-elected in 2021 with 55 p.c. He has comfortably led in polls this yr as properly.
In addition to crime, Ms. Hall has pushed arduous towards the growth of the Ultra Low Emission Zone, or Ulez, a plan by which drivers of automobiles that don’t meet emissions requirements should pay 12 kilos, 50 pence, or about $15.80, per day in the event that they drive in London.
Some wardens imposing Ulez have coated their faces with balaclavas after going through threats and harassment by activists who oppose the scheme.
The commercial, each earlier than and after the removing of the Penn Station scene, declares: “In the depths of those slender passageways tread squads of Ulez enforcers, wearing black, faces coated with masks, terrorizing communities on the beck and name of their Labour mayor grasp.”
