The Met Police, Sadiq Khan, and the Law that only applies to some: The Next Steps

Where We Are and Why It Matters

This is an update on my formal complaint against the Metropolitan Police Service's decision not to investigate London Mayor Sadiq Khan for suspected criminal incitement to racial hatred. I have now taken the matter significantly further, and the public deserves to know exactly what has been done, why, and what it means.

The short version is this: the Met Police has issued an outcome that I regard as legally inadequate, institutionally compromised, and inconsistent with the way it applies the law to everyone else. I have challenged it on every available front simultaneously.

What the Met Police Decided — and Why It Is Wrong

On 3 June 2026, Sergeant Stuart Shaw of the Met Police Directorate of Professional Standards issued his Complaint Outcome Report in respect of complaint reference PC/13271/25. He concluded that the decision by Acting Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Rudd on 20 November 2025 not to investigate the Mayor's remarks constituted "acceptable" service.

I reject that conclusion, and I do so on grounds that are specific, evidenced and serious.

The Met Police's own Freedom of Information response (reference 01/FOI/25/049201/E, dated 11 February 2026) confirmed that A/DCI Rudd made his decision without obtaining any case-specific legal advice. He relied on general advice about the chant "From the river to the sea" that was drafted in October 2023 — two years before Sadiq Khan's October 2025 remarks, and before the most significant period of antisemitic violence this country has seen in living memory.

The Complaint Outcome Report does not address this at all. It cites the 2023 advice as though it were adequate for the purpose. It is not. It predates the October 2023 Hamas attacks, the subsequent surge in antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom, and the specific context of a nationally broadcast television interview in which Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London — who is simultaneously, by statute, the Police and Crime Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Service — publicly defended a chant rooted in Hamas's founding ideology.

The Report also concludes that there was "no likelihood of stirring racial hatred." This conclusion was not open on the evidence. The statutory test under section 18(1)(b) of the Public Order Act 1986 is objective: it asks not whether Khan intended to stir hatred, but whether his conduct was likely to do so. That question must be assessed in context. The context here was: the highest-profile elected official in London, speaking on national television to millions of viewers, stating that a chant used at hundreds of protest marches and rooted in a Hamas declaration of genocidal intent was not antisemitic — eight days after a fatal terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur.

The Report treats Khan’s public role as reducing his culpability, because he "responded to a question" and "expressed a contextual opinion." This analysis is precisely backwards. When the Mayor of London speaks, his words carry an authority that no private citizen's words can match. His public validation of this chant sends a direct message to those who use it: that the most powerful elected official in the UK’s capital city sees nothing wrong with it. That is not a mitigating factor. It is an aggravating one.

The Sadiq Khan Question

I have been careful throughout this process to keep the focus on the law, the evidence, and the institutional failures of the MPS. I maintain that care here. But there are matters of context that the public is entitled to consider.

Sadiq Khan is a devout Muslim. In May 2026 he returned from performing the Hajj — the pilgrimage to Mecca that holds the deepest significance in Islam and that speaks to the sincerity and depth of his religious convictions. Those convictions are entirely his private matter, and I do not suggest otherwise.

What is a matter of legitimate public concern is this: that a man in his position, with those convictions, has consistently and publicly declined to characterise the chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as antisemitic. The chant originates in the Palestine Liberation Organisation's 1964 Charter, was adopted by Hamas in its 1988 Covenant as a declaration of the complete elimination of the State of Israel, and was reaffirmed in Hamas's 2017 Document.

When Hamas uses that phrase, it means what it says. The United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom have each said so publicly.

The question that no institution has yet been willing to ask — let alone answer — is this: what is the effect, on a city experiencing record levels of antisemitic violence, of the most prominent publicly-funded elected official in that city repeatedly declining to call this language what it is? The Met Police has not asked that question. The Complaint Outcome Report does not ask it.

I am asking it. And I am asking the bodies to whom I have written to ask it too.

The Conflict of Interest That Cannot Be Ignored

There is a structural problem at the heart of this entire process that I have now formally raised at every level.

Sadiq Khan is, by statute, the Police and Crime Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Service. He holds oversight responsibility for the very force that was asked to investigate him. The Met Police is therefore in the constitutionally untenable position of determining whether to investigate its own Commissioner.

This is not a theoretical concern. The Met Police recorded a non-crime hate incident (ref: 01/8225922/25) acknowledging a hate element in the Mayor's remarks. Yet it declined to investigate. It then took six months — with two missed self-imposed deadlines — to issue a conduct complaint outcome. It then directed the review of that outcome to MOPAC — the Mayor's own office.

Read that again. The Mayor's own office has been designated as the body to review a complaint about the MPS's failure to investigate the Mayor.

This is the nemo iudex in causa sua principle — no one may be a judge in their own cause — applied to one of the most serious conflicts of interest in recent London governance. It is not acceptable, and I have said so formally.

What I Have Done

I have submitted formal representations simultaneously to three bodies.

To the Met Police itself, I have placed on the formal record my specific objections to the reasoning in the Complaint Outcome Report, paragraph by paragraph, so that every reviewing body has those objections in front of it. I have challenged the reliance on outdated advice, the failure to apply the section 18 test correctly, the inversion of the Mayor's public role from aggravating to mitigating factor, and the absence of any engagement with the context of antisemitic violence. I have also formally objected to MOPAC's designation as review body.

To MOPAC, I have filed a formal review application — because the 28-day statutory deadline (1 July 2026) is not something I am prepared to miss, and because filing under protest preserves my rights. However, I have opened that application with a constitutional objection to MOPAC's jurisdiction, citing the common law principle of independence, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Police Reform Act 2002. I have demanded that MOPAC refer the matter immediately to the IOPC.

To the Independent Office for Police Conduct, I have written to Rachel Watson, Director-General, formally inviting the IOPC to exercise its statutory power of initiative under Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. This power allows the IOPC to open an independent investigation without waiting for a complaint or force referral, where it considers it in the public interest to do so. I have set out five specific, documented failures of the MPS process, the structural conflict of interest that makes MOPAC unsuitable as review body, and the grounds of public interest that I respectfully submit are compelling and urgent.

The FOIA matter remains before the Information Commissioner's Office under section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The Unequal Application of the Law

I have set out in my formal representations the pattern of MPS enforcement action in comparable cases. It is a pattern that should trouble everyone who believes in equality before the law.

Jordan Parlour was convicted under section 18 of the Public Order Act 1986 and sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment for Facebook posts urging attacks on a hotel housing asylum seekers. Tyler Kay received 38 months for similar social media posts. Lucy Connolly received 31 months' imprisonment for a post she deleted within hours that was viewed 310,000 times. Multiple Christian street preachers have been arrested, detained, and subjected to non-crime hate incident recording on the basis of anonymous complaints about the content of sermons — in cases where courts later awarded compensation for wrongful arrest.

In each of those cases, the speech in question reached a far smaller audience, carried far less public authority, and in several cases was of substantially less inflammatory content than the nationally broadcast remarks of the Mayor of London. Yet the Met Police pursued those individuals. It has not pursued Sadiq Khan. I have asked formally why not, and I have received no adequate answer.

The principle is simple: the law applies equally to all persons, regardless of office, faith, ideology, or political alignment. Power does not confer immunity. Accountability is not optional for those at the top. Sadiq Khan is not above the law.

The Antisemitic Violence That Is the Backdrop to All of This

The Complaint Outcome Report makes no reference to the context of antisemitic violence in which all of this has taken place. That omission is itself revealing.

Since October 2023, the United Kingdom has seen a 1,353 per cent rise in antisemitic incidents in London.

The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom in 2025 — the second-highest annual total since records began in 1984. Since Sadiq Khan’s October 2025 remarks, this country has seen the first fatal antisemitic terrorist attack on British soil in the CST's recorded history (Manchester, Yom Kippur, 2 October 2025); the deliberate arson of four Jewish ambulances in Golders Green (23 March 2026); the firebombing of Finchley Reform Synagogue (15 April 2026); a knife attack on Jewish pedestrians in Golders Green declared a terrorist incident, following which the national terrorism threat level was raised to Severe (29 April 2026); and sustained antisemitic abuse directed at Jewish schoolchildren at a football match in Norfolk (March 2026).

This is the environment in which the Mayor of London told the nation that a chant rooted in Hamas ideology is not antisemitic. This is the environment in which the MPS decided that his doing so created no likelihood of stirring racial hatred. These two facts must be placed side by side and examined.

What Happens Next

The IOPC must now respond to my invitation to exercise its power of initiative. MOPAC must respond to my review application and to my constitutional objection to its jurisdiction. The ICO must determine the FOIA matter.

I will publish every development here. I will not be fatigued into silence. I will not be procedurally exhausted into giving up. And I am deeply grateful to everyone who has written to their MP, to the Home Secretary, and to the ICO in support of this cause.

If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to do so now. Write to your MP. Ask them what safeguards exist when the subject of a police complaint is also the Commissioner who oversees that police force. Ask them what the IOPC intends to do. Ask the Home Secretary why the law that sent Lucy Connolly to prison for a tweet has not been applied to the Mayor of London for a nationally broadcast television interview.

This matters. It matters for the Jewish community. It matters for the rule of law. It matters for every person in this country who believes that no one — however powerful, however prominent, however politically protected — should be above the law.

I will not stop. We must not stop.

Previous articles on this issue:

The Met Police, Sadiq Khan, and the Law That only Applies to Some - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/18a58dad-4dd6-4029-8037-09fd51e0a66e/edit

Update: Complaint & FOIA Delay – Why Is the Metropolitan Police Shielding Sadiq Khan’s “From the River to the Sea” Statement?4 February 2026 - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/9e56c084-e1df-4a9d-bcce-98556bd1b1c0/edit

Metropolitan Police Refuse to Investigate Sadiq Khan’s Defence of “From the River to the Sea” Chant Despite Recording It as a Hate Incident - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/9528cbd4-adb4-4c1e-a317-0ccf69862a54/edit

When the Mayor Says “From the River to the Sea” is Fine – But the Police Won’t Tell Us Why - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/406496fa-41bd-4372-8dca-0327c03a4129/edit

Letter to Metropolitan Police Commissioner: Investigation Into Potential Incitement to Racial Hatred by Mayor of London - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/1ba2f253-d074-4753-894e-6b502cfc90aa/edit

Inciting Hatred: Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Defence of the ‘From the River to the Sea’ Chant and Its Role in Fuelling Anti-Semitic Violence in London Protests - https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/add92938-76ea-4c81-afa1-f99492fad22d/blog/8c3a8b7c-a451-4709-a565-df6f076c967a/edit