SMT Online Editor's View: The Teflon Don unglued at last

08 Oct 08

Having been appointed the 24th Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service in February 2005, Sir Ian Blair subsequently presided over a plethora of astonishing gaffes that finally came home to roost last Wednesday when Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson decided the Met needs to move forward with a new strategic direction, a reinvigorated clarity of purpose and, above all, with a different leader at the helm. Thank God someone finally set the wheels in motion to end what had become an embarrassing circus at New Scotland Yard.

Just look at what has happened. First up, the Jean Charles de Menezes affair. At first, Sir Ian impressed with a resolute message broadcast live to the nation in the wake of the 7/7 bombings but, later that month – as you all know – the Brazilian electrician was shot in the head no less than seven times by two police marksmen operating at point blank range.

When the news broke, Sir Ian claimed the tragic incident at Stockwell London Underground Station was directly linked to an anti-terror operation, but accusations were rife that the Commissioner (who has been in the police service for 34 years) had deliberately misled the public about what the police actually knew on the day.

Sir Ian has subsequently been cleared of any wrongdoings. We’re told that he didn’t lie to or ‘purposefully mislead’ the public, but revelations that the country’s Top Cop had seemingly been left in the dark about the tragic slaying of an innocent young man surely says something of the operational chasm that perceivably existed between the controversial 55-year-old ‘academic policeman’ and his 30,000-plus officers.

The Soham murders and institutional racism

Then there was the small matter of the Soham murders. In January 2006, Sir Ian bizarrely accused the national media of “institutional racism” for its alleged “unbalanced coverage of crimes against white people”. By way of an example, Blair informed us all that “almost nobody” knew why the vile 2002 murders of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had become such a huge story. A faux pas of the very worst kind. Hardly surprising, then, that what followed was a grovelling apology in the direction of Holly and Jessica’s distraught parents.

Barely eight weeks later, it then emerged Sir Ian had secretly taped several telephone conversations (including one involving then attorney general Lord Goldsmith). Maybe MI6 should have despatched one of its 19,000-a-year ‘security specialists’ to unravel this clandestine activity (SMT’s Editor writes with tongue firmly in cheek)?

A short four months passed before the Oxford University graduate in English beggared belief yet again when stating (somehow with a straight face) that the London Borough of Haringey provides a safe enough environment for residents that they can happily leave their back doors unlocked. At the time, one member of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) described the Commissioner’s comments as “truly extraordinary”. That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. “Naïve and totally irresponsible” might be another.

No wonder that, by this time, dozens of TV cameras and rabid tabloid journalists had begun to follow every public meeting involving the Commissioner based on the ‘Just In Case’ scenario. In other words, ‘Just In Case’ another blunder would reveal itself.

Sure enough, it happened. This July, the MPA called for Sir Ian to face an inquiry after it emerged that IT contracts worth the paltry sum of £3 million had been awarded to Impact Plus (a company that happens to be owned by Sir Ian’s long-time friend and skiing companion Andy Miller). As usual, any wrongdoings are denied. The awarding of these contracts is now being investigated by Sir Ronnie Flanagan (more of whom anon).

Widespread reports in the national media that Sir Ian – allegedly – also threw another £15,000 of the tax payers’ money Miller’s way three-and-a-half years ago so that he could serve as a ‘public image consultant’ for the Commissioner is a mere drop in the ocean, isn’t it? Except when you learn that, apparently, there weren’t any rival bidders for the task of ‘King Makeover’ in this vanity contract extraordinaire. Draw your own conclusions.

Carrying on in office

While we’re on the subject of Sir Ian Blair’s Blunders, it would be remiss of me not to mention the racism debacle. Consistently dubbed ‘New Labour’s favourite policeman’, Blair has been at loggerheads with Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur (now effectively suspended for holding an impromptu press conference in which he outlined his claims against the Met), while several other race-related cases opposing Sir Ian and the Met are pending.

Accusations of institutional racism have dogged the police service for decades. Stories of verbal abuse in training colleges and barriers to promotion pop up with almost the exact same tiresome regularity as does the phrase ‘Credit Crunch’ in our nightly news bulletins. Many would say there’s no smoke without fire.

Sir Ian wanted to carry on until his term of office naturally expired in February 2010 (so would you if you had the unrestricted use of a chauffeur-driven car and a rather tasty £1 million South West London flat) and, in his resignation statement, he kicked and screamed to the inevitable, sorry end by resting responsibility for his departure squarely at Boris Johnson’s door.

“The new Mayor made clear to me, in a very pleasant but determined way, that he wished there to be a change of leadership at the Met,” said Sir Ian, dressed in a sombre dark suit. “I understand that, to serve effectively, the Commissioner must have the confidence of the Mayor and the Home Secretary. Without the Mayor’s backing, I do not consider that I can continue working in the job. Personally, I see no bar to working effectively with the new Mayor, but it’s there that we differ and, hence, I am unable to continue.”

Government officials are furious that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wasn’t informed of what had happened until the day after Johnson met with Blair. Smith and Johnson are now obliged to work together in the process of appointing a new Commissioner, but one suspects that political wrangling is almost inevitably going to cloud the issue. The Labour Party has made it clear that Smith will not be dictated to by a Tory Mayor, while Johnson’s aides feel strongly it would be “obscenely inappropriate” if the Home Secretary were to overrule the wild-haired boss of London in any way whatsoever. Stalemate, anyone?

What happened on Question Time

All of this political dog-fighting beautifully teed up last Thursday night’s Question Time on BBC1, broadcast live from The Great Hall at the University of Birmingham during the week of the Conservative Party Conference.

For those of you who didn’t tune in, you missed a treat. The panellists were Jacqui Smith, Charles Kennedy (former leader of the Liberal Democrats who, at times, talked a good deal of sense), CBI director general Richard Lambert, broadcaster and journalist Janet Street-Porter and former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine .

Not surprisingly, good old ‘Dimbers’ (aka David Dimbleby) let Smith have first crack at The Sir Ian Blair Question right at the top of the programme, at which point the Home Secretary immediately began to display – yet again – an astonishing lack of connection with the real world.

“Gun crime is down in the Capital,” asserted Smith. Your heavily massaged figures might say it is, Home Secretary, but the national and London newspapers tell a very different story almost on a daily basis.

“Sir Ian was responsible for setting up community policing in the Capital.” Hang on a minute, Home Secretary Smith. Weren’t Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) the brainchild of your predecessor David Blunkett? Was it not said Blunkett who ‘served’ the country when Sir John Stevens, not Sir Ian Blair, was Top Cop?

Continuing to point her black Bic medium with thinly veiled venom in the direction of ‘Tarzan’, Ms Smith droned on and on about the “increased numbers of police officers” on our Capital’s streets. No, they’re not police officers you see on the streets, Home Secretary. They’re mostly ‘Sir Ian Blair’s PCSOs’ [sic]. Whether you like it or not, there’s a world of difference between the two.

As Janet Street-Porter assiduously pointed out in relation to the latter: “They [PCSOs] can write lots of stuff down in notebooks, but they can’t arrest anyone. They’re the plastic police”. Cue huge round of applause from the audience. Members of the public (at least those in Birmingham, anyway) are no longer for fooling, it seems. Thank God for that.

Michael Heseltine succinctly explained the reality of the situation. The police are hamstrung. Bogged down by endless paperwork and mired in bureaucracy. Meanwhile, violence in London and our other major cities has reached epidemic proportions and shows no sign of abatement.

John Reid resigned from the Government having suggested that the Home Office’s Immigration Department wasn’t fit for purpose. Critics would say that comment might be directed at the Home Office in general. The groundswell of public opinion wants to see a zero tolerance approach to crime, but while the appeasement culture is allowed to persist in this country that situation’s never likely to materialise.

An undermining of professional integrity

Speaking about Sir Ian’s resignation, another of Smith’s predecessors at the Home Office, Charles Clarke, is reported to have said: “I deplore the fact that the Mayor of London and the Shadow Home Secretary have introduced party politics into the policing of London, and have undermined the necessary independence and professional integrity of the Commissioner.” If anyone has undermined the Commissioner’s professional integrity, Mr Clarke, surely it’s the Commissioner himself?

Of course, the sad irony of the situation is that Sir Ian will walk away from office on 1 December with a pay-off possibly worth something in the region of a tidy £350,000. Given that Prime Minister Gordon Brown feels Sir Ian “has made a huge personal contribution to the safety and security of our country”, it would be no shock if the Commissioner receives his £240,000 annual salary right up to the date of his contract expiring. On top of that, a lump sum of “at least” £100,000 may also find its way into Sir Ian’s bank of choice and, a little later, substantial pension payments (based on his salary, somewhere in the region of £160,000 or so per year). No problems with the pension payments, but the salary pay-off? Staggering, isn’t it?

Call me cynical, but why should a man who has presided over what so many feel to have been a shambles of a three-year term in office then be handsomely ‘rewarded’ for the privilege? If you or I were to voluntarily leave our place of employment there would be no Golden Handshake. Yes, the pension would – rightly – be frozen for you and you’ll receive it in due course (just as well, because the State doesn’t look like it’s going to give us anything to live on in retirement), but that’s it.

In just the same way those City financiers who have richly screwed the entire nation by toying with the economy, irresponsibly lending vast sums of money to people with no hope of paying it back – and who have helped fashion a society built on debt while continuing to boast about their multi-million pound bonuses (sick, isn’t it?) – our Top Cop can hang up the old uniform in the knowledge that his bank balance is nicely stoked and let someone else pick up the pieces of the de Menezes affair, the institutional racism accusations and any other little ‘mistakes’ we’ve yet to hear about. It’s shameful.

Out of touch with the rank and file

Supporters put forward this notion of Sir Ian Blair as “a thoughtful reformer” and “a visionary”. True, he did champion styles of policing adopted in the United States, and looked to the New York Police Department’s so-called ‘broken windows’ approach of improving neighbourhoods and reassuring communities with a visible police presence. He was also the first serving policeman in over 30 years to deliver The Dimbleby Lecture, revelling in intellectual debate as he quoted William Beveridge, Robert Kennedy and Georges Clemenceau.

Arguably, this is where Sir Ian was most comfortable, but ultimately it’s a position that appears to have left him hopelessly out of touch with the rank and file. Often, Sir Ian was accused of thinking like a politician rather than a policeman. Here was a man perhaps too close to the Labour Government for comfort, and who may well have enjoyed the corridors of Whitehall more than he did those of New Scotland Yard. How rich an irony it was politics that would bring his controversy-ridden tenure to a close.

Defiant to the end, Sir Ian also said in his final public statement: “I’m resigning not because of any failures by my Service, nor due to the pressures of the office and the fact that the many stories that surround it are too much. I am resigning in the best interests of the people of London and of the Metropolitan Police Service.”

The timing smacks of high convenience for a beleaguered individual who may well have decided to jump before he was unceremoniously pushed. The latest ‘style counselling’ scandal is but another one too many, while the de Menezes episode will never, ever disappear. Boris Johnson has simply provided a convenient get-out clause. Either way, The Teflon Don of Policing has finally lost his grip on power, and – it must be said – not before time.

Where next for the Met?

As far as the Met is concerned, where do we go from here? Possible successors have already been touted. Among them are Sir Hugh Orde, the energetic chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and a protégé of Lord Stevens. Orde – who spoke eloquently at the recent Association of Security Consultants Annual Luncheon – is an experienced investigator with a detailed understanding of intelligence and national security issues. After five years in Belfast, Orde is thought to be ready for a move, but would he fancy a residency in London?

Then there’s fellow Irishman Sir Ronnie Flanagan who, for the past three years, has served as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary after three decades with the RUC during ‘The Troubles’. 58-year-old Flanagan is politically well trusted and respected (certainly among members of the UK’s security community), and was swiftly employed by (then) Prime Minister Tony Blair to report on reforms aimed at improving the Iraqi police.

An outside bet would have been Sir Norman Bettison (the chief constable of West Yorkshire who last weekend pretty much ruled himself out of the race by criticising Johnson’s dismissal of Sir Ian). Still on the list of possibles are National Policing Improvement Agency chief executive Peter Neyroud and Mike Fuller, the popular chief constable of Kent Police.

If he were willing, my preference would be to see Bernard Hogan-Howe (currently chief constable of Merseyside Police) move to the Capital. The results of what this man has done in terms of fighting crime in Liverpool speak volumes, with his Total Policing philosophy based on the zero tolerance approach craved by the masses.

Harking back to Question Time, whomever becomes Commissioner it’s fair to say that the Government, the MPA and Boris Johnson ought to heed the words of Richard Lambert. “The Commissioner is responsible for the largest force in the country, for counter-terror strategy and the London Authority,” said Lambert. “He or she is, in effect, an elected politician. There’s myriad accountabilities there, and perhaps it’s just a little too much for one person to bear.”

There’s more than a grain of truth in that statement. It’s also true Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti is right when suggesting that far too many senior police personnel are trying too hard to be politicians when they should be concentrating on their own back yard.

The ‘Sir Ian Blair Experience’ should tell the managerial Boys in Blue they’re definitely barking up the wrong tree.

Helping the ‘Have-a-Go Heroes’

Speaking at the Conservative’s annual gathering in England’s Second City, Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve outlined welcome plans to help end the ‘walk on by society’ in which we now live. Grieve feels that far too many individuals are scared of making genuine attempts to prevent crime. Many of those that do have been arrested and, worse still, prosecuted just for wanting to show that they’re a good citizen and despise criminality.

Grieve’s words follow hot-on-the-heels of the death of Barclays Wealth’s chief operating officer Frank McGarahan, the 45-year-old graduate in law from Southampton University who, only a few days ago, spotted a man and a woman being attacked in Norwich city centre in the early hours of the morning and shouted for the assailants to desist. For his troubles, McGarahan – who was visiting the town with his brother for a christening – was set upon by the gang (believed to be at least five strong) who inflicted upon him serious head injuries that would eventually cost his life.

The Conservatives claim evidence suggests that the police and prosecutors are too ready to accept allegations made by criminals against ordinary citizens who try to apprehend them. The Tories want to amend the Code for Crown Prosecutors – and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act Code of Practice – such that the chances of someone acting in good faith being put before a judge for doing so are reduced. Amen to that.

Grieve has pledged to “take on the Health and Safety culture” (by amending Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act to ensure that protecting members of the public from risk is afforded priority over the risk to police officers). He feels that “current legislation is holding police officers back, and making them much more risk averse”.

While I would not wish to say that a member of the public’s life is of greater importance than that of the police officer, it’s the latter’s job to maintain law and order. With that responsibility comes the necessary risk of violence perpetrated against them. They may well die in the course of their duties, but as Donald Rumsfeld would say that’s a “known known” when anyone signs on the dotted line for front line operations. It comes with the territory.

The problem, I believe, is not that the police are scared to intervene. That’s far from the case. Rather, what the majority of them must be frightened of is the “criminal scum” (to which my esteemed colleague Alan Hyder rightly referred in his excellent Security Installer Editors View) turning the tables and crying police brutality when all they have received is – quite literally – a firm tug on the upper arm or a pair of handcuffs slapped on them before being ushered into the van and driven to the cells.

We have seen this little charade too many times, and we’ve also seen too many Courts let that same “criminal scum” off with a lame slap on the wrists even when convicted of serious wrongdoings. Maybe that’s why there are so many repeat offenders, Prime Minister?

In response to Grieve’s words, Home Office minister Tony McNulty trotted out the same old guff about wanting to ensure that “the criminal justice system is weighted firmly in favour of the victim, not the criminal”. We’ve heard it all before, Mr McNulty, and yet the status quo has never been disturbed by you or, indeed, any of your colleagues. Not even budged one inch.

Hopefully, CCTV footage will prove conclusive in helping to convict whomever beat Frank McGarahan so hard that his brain flooded with blood.

The greatest tribute this country could pay Frank and all of the ‘Have-a-Go Heroes’ in our communities would be to oust Gordon and Friends from office when the ballot boxes open for business. We have now reached the stage when almost any credible alternative would be preferable to the bunch of no-hopers in Government who have conspired – through inordinate amounts of spin and, frankly, gross incompetence – to systematically destroy the social and economic fabric of this country.

Make no mistake. It’s not only the Home Office that isn’t fit for purpose.

Until next time.

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