Earlier this week, a senior aide to the Prime Minister asked a newspaper: “Do you want the Metropolitan Police deciding who the Prime Minister is?”
The question came in response to the growing concern that Mr Johnson is going to be hit with a fixed penalty notice for his lockdown party antics.
“They would have to be very certain,” continued the source. “If he does get one, it would be odd if the discretionary action of the police determines the future of the country.”
Ominous. It’s sort of got a Game of Thrones feel to it, a veiled kind of threat. But we’ve been repeatedly assured – and the feeling round here is that it’s accurate – that the police are doing a thorough and accurate job on their party investigations.
It’s difficult to be convinced.
The Met is not looking great. Cressida Dick’s time in charge is over. Pretty much a catalogue of disaster, save a new world U-turn record on Thursday when I didn’t even have time to finish Wordle in the gap between, “I’m not going to quit” and, “I quit”.
Ms Dick leaves with a terrible record. If you can ignore – and who can ignore? – some of the disgraces she has presided over, the most damaging is the failure to change decades of rotten culture.
It was 1999 when the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence found the Met to be “institutionally racist”. It was just last year that the Home Affairs Committee said there was still work to be done. Met Commissioners come and go yet the problems remain. Is the next boss going to sort things out? Probably not.
It’s clear the Met needs a change of culture urgently. Maybe it’s impossible. That it is too deeply ingrained.
For example, I received a copy of a report from Teesside University about the experiences of 23 women officers in England. It took first-hand accounts from the 1970s onward.
The 1970s, as you would expect if you’ve watched The Sweeney, were chilling. Just a catalogue of low-grade horror. In 1977, one woman said: “It was the norm for policewomen to undergo initiation ceremonies which were normally of a sexual nature.
“I don’t mean full sex but it was not unusual for police officers to grope policewomen up, make lewd remarks and jokes.”
That kind of treatment carries on through the decades, all there in black and white. Same old same old.
Fifty years later, messages from Charing Cross Police Station show more sexist chat from officers, branching out into rape, beating their wives and killing black children. Clearly the “just a couple of rotten apples” defence has failed. At least a fair bit of the barrel is on the turn.
I’m not sure the calls for disbanding the force or splitting it up will work. It is a root and branch job that will be slow and painful. It’s taken decades for what little progress there has been, so what’s a few decades more?
Meantime, the question of would you want the Met deciding who the Prime Minister is remains out there.
No, is the straight answer. At the moment I don’t even trust the Met to decide who the criminals are.
