More than 40,000 people have put their names to a petition calling for Sadiq Khan to step down over his handling of the grooming gangs issue in London, with the document now heading for City Hall.

The CitizenGo advocacy group is due to place the petition in the hands of Reform UK London Assembly member Keith Prince, whose job it will then be to put it before City Hall formally. The campaign aims to force “urgent attention” onto grooming gangs operating in the capital while shining a light on what it calls the Mayor’s “refusal” to order an inquiry.

Khan’s record on the issue has drawn fierce criticism. Asked nine times in January 2025 whether rape gangs had ever operated in London — past or present — he stonewalled repeatedly, saying he was “not clear” what was being asked. When questioners spelled out exactly what they meant, citing the well-documented cases in Rotherham and Bradford, the Mayor said he was “none the wiser.”

He had separately gone on record the previous year to say there was no “indication of grooming gangs” in London functioning on the scale seen in Rochdale or Rotherham.

Whistleblower

According to GB News, the Mayor’s position looks even more uncomfortable in light of claims made by former Met Police officer and whistleblower Jon Wedger, who told the broadcaster in October that Khan was “beyond redemption” on the subject. Wedger alleged he was pressured to shelve probes into 50 child abuse cases under threat of losing his “home, job and children”, with superiors warning that what he had found would “f*** the Metropolitan Police.”

The ground shifted further last month when a BBC investigation established that young girls had indeed been pulled into grooming gangs across London — cutting directly against the Mayor’s earlier position. The head of the Met’s child exploitation unit covering the south London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, Detective Sergeant John Knox, described girls and young women as occupying the “lowest rung” of gang hierarchies.

A separate examination by Baroness Casey into group-based child sexual exploitation found fault lines in the way the Met had been logging child abuse — raising questions about whether the true scale of the problem had ever been properly captured.

‘Catastrophic failure’

According ot the report, CitizenGO UK campaigner Zuzana Revayova pulled no punches in her assessment of Khan’s tenure, accusing him of overseeing a “catastrophic failure” and attacking his “leadership on this issue, or rather the lack of it.”

She said: “While the Mayor focuses on divisive ideological agendas, the safety of London’s most vulnerable children is being compromised.

“The tens of thousands of people who signed this petition are demanding accountability and real action.”

Khan’s office pushed back, reportedly insisting the Mayor had “always been clear that the safety of Londoners is his top priority and nowhere is this truer than in safeguarding children.”

The spokesman pointed to a £15.6million Violence and Exploitation Support Service designed to protect young Londoners caught up in criminal exploitation, and said Khan remained “committed to doing all he can to protect children in London from organised criminal and sexual exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice.”

The statement added that the capital would “continue to do everything we can to protect children from abuse, violence and exploitation in all its forms.”