“Political correctness has directly led to the murder rate going up in London,” former UKIP leader and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nigel Farage has argued.

He pointed to the police’s focus on ‘hate crime’ and the fact both London mayor Sadiq Khan and Prime Minister Theresa May, when serving as Home Secretary, promised to slash the use of police stop-and-search powers, claiming the tactic harmed relations with ethnic minorities.

Speaking on his LBC radio show from Washington D.C., Mr. Farage said: “Theresa May was Home Secretary for a very long time, the longest-serving for 150 years.

“She did in the early years have crime that was falling, which meant she felt more comfortable to cut back the size of the police force. But she very much introduced political correctness in policing.”

Left-wing groups had campaigned against stop and search for years, claiming it is “racist”.

Political correctness has directly led to @SadiqKhan's mess in London. Bring back stop and search. pic.twitter.com/rwmo2HhRAA — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 5, 2018

Sadiq Khan and current Home Secretary Amber Rudd both said they would reverse the policy of cutting back on stop-and-search as knife crime began to surge – jumping by 38 per cent in the capital recently.

However, according to an analysis by The Times, the number of searches is actually still falling. London police carried out 19,931 in January and February this year; a fall of 6 per cent from the same period in 2017.

Moving on to the new “hate crime” obsession, Mr. Farage added: “We now have 900 Metropolitan Police officers dealing with hate crime… Words can hurt people and upset people and make them feel excluded. But where are the priorities?”

https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/920992101709635584

In 2016, Mr. Khan announced that millions in taxpayer cash were to be spent on an “online hate crime hub” to police speech online and criminalise people offending others on social media.

In 2017, London police announced they no longer had the resources to investigate many “low-level” crimes, including some assaults and forms of fraud, but made a specific exception for “hate crimes” and promised to always act if someone’s identity had been offended.

Despite the massive focus on offensive speech and “hate crimes” prosecutions for have actually fallen despite a large increase in reporting — indicating that many allegations are flimsy or even fictional.

A “hate incident” only needs to be “perceived” by the victim — or a someone else — to be logged by police, with “no evidence” needed. Some police forces even include “unfriendliness” as an indicator of “hate”.