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Shaun Bailey has been named the Tories' London mayor candidate after just 7,000 Conservative members took part in the vote to choose him.

Mr Bailey is a vocal critic of Sadiq Khan saying the Labour mayor has “failed on crime”.

But the former Downing Street aide has himself been slammed for his key role in implementing crippling cuts to London’s police and youth services.

And he came under fire today after it emerged he shared a tweet dubbing Mr Khan "mad mullah Khan of Londonistan".

The message, branded "disgraceful" by a Labour MP, was included in an image attached to a tweet written by someone else that Mr Bailey retweeted in summer 2017.

A spokesman for Shaun Bailey told The Independent: “These grossly offensive words were in no way visible in the chain that was retweeted.

“Shaun was completely unaware of their existence, and as someone who has suffered racial abuse himself, there is no way on earth Shaun would ever knowingly have shared something so offensive.”

Labour say Mr Bailey “can’t be trusted to keep London safe” as he helped to slash services in the capital.

The London Assembly member worked as Special Adviser on Crime and Youth to David Cameron and George Osborne while they oversaw cuts of over £76m to the Metropolitan Police and the loss of 301 police officers from London’s streets.

This process he started has continued to this day, with police numbers in London dropping to their lowest level in 20 years.

There are now 4,345 fewer police staff posts in the capital compared to 2010.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

Mr Bailey was also working in Downing Street as the Tories axed £61m from youth services in England and £8.4m in London alone over the same period.

Nearly 2,000 youth worker jobs were lost, over 350 youth centres were closed and nearly 41,000 places for young people were cut in the UK between 2012 and 2014 – the period that covers Bailey’s time advising the Government.

He has now made putting “bobbies on the beat” a key plank of his campaign saying he would put an extra thousand police officers back on the streets.

And the former youth worker has also pledged to support “diversion initiatives” to help young men stay away from crime.

Mr Bailey has denied that cuts to police and youth services has been a factor in rising violent crime, recently tweeting that: “The problem isn’t funding, it’s Khan’s choices”.

Of the Tory members who took part in the selection just over 3,000 voted for Mr Bailey in the first round.

3,904 voted for him when it went to a second round, beating second-placed Andrew Boff by 718 votes. Joy Morrissey came third with 1,566 votes in the first round.

The turnout of 7,321 was 47.8% of eligible Tory members, implying the party has a membership of around 15,000 in the capital.

By comparison almost 90,000 Labour members took part in the 2015 selection for the capital's mayor Sadiq Khan.

This time round enough local Labour Parties backed him that his continued candidateship did not need to be put to a full vote.

Louise Haigh MP, Labour’s Shadow Policing Minister, said: “Shaun Bailey played a key role designing and implementing the austerity that has devastated London’s police service and youth clubs. This shows that he simply can’t be trusted to keep London safe.

“The cuts that were implemented by Shaun Bailey - not to mention George Osborne who is now editor of the Evening Standard - has made it far harder for our police officers to tackle the rise in crime across the UK.

“Londoners need a Mayor who will stand up for London to get the funding our police and youth services desperately need - as Sadiq is doing - not yet another austerity supporting Tory.”

A spokesman said: “Thanks to the Labour government Khan was a Cabinet Minister in, spending was left at unsustainable levels in the wake of the global financial crisis.

“Indeed, as Labour admitted when the electorate kicked them out of office there simply was “no money left”.

“The coalition government which Mr Bailey advised put the economy back on track and made sure there was a long-term economic plan to fund vital services like policing.

(Image: PA)

“During Mr Bailey’s time as a Special Adviser to the government crime levels fell, including a 28% drop in knife crime.

“Under Sadiq Khan, however, crime levels have shot back up by 10 percent.

“This is a result of both the changing nature of gang crime - which is now increasingly fermenting online before spilling onto our streets - and a less aggressive approach by Mayor Khan to policing that crime.

“That was a mistake - we must always press down on criminals to protect our communities.’

“Mr Khan is to be supported on the establishment of a Violence Reduction Unit, but he should also be criticized for continuing to spend on things like his City Hall office and PR budgets when that money could be better spent on front line police, as Mr Bailey has outlined with his costed plans to put 1,000 more bobbies on the beat and 800 more detectives on the job to investigate serious crime.”