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Friday, November 02, 2007

The buck stops with Blair

The Metropolitan Police has been fined £175,000 after being found guilty of breaching health and safety regulations in the operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station on 22 July 2005.  In effect, this is a legal admission that Mr Menezes was unlawfully killed.  And yet apparently noone is responsible.

It should go without saying that the circumstances in London at the time, in the aftermath of the 7 July bombings that killed 52 people, and the failed attempted bombing of 21 July, were extraordinarily difficult.  The series of mistakes and bad decisions which the trial has uncovered has nevertheless been long and unsettling.  The people of London and the nation have a right to expect that similar mistakes will not happen again. 

How then, are we to be sure that there will be no repetition, when specific responsibility for the events of 22 July 2005 has not been ascertained?  If the Metropolitan Police as a whole is responsible, upon whom does the ultimate responsibility for the failings of this institution fall?  The answer to this question is obvious enough: the buck stops with Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.  Guido Fawkes is clear enough in his view: Sir Ian must go:

When Nick Clegg and David Davis both call for your head it is not a good day at the office. Will the Met's top cop survive? Sir Ian Blair is New Labour's favourite copper, he will no doubt try to shamelessly cling on regardless. That is the standard response of the modern political class to any criticism, no matter how serious. Be in no doubt that Sir Ian is a very political animal.

Big Jacqui is backing him. Her shadows want him sacked. If the buck doesn't stop with him where does it stop? An innocent man was executed in an extra-judicial killing - the only repercussion so far is a fine as a result of action brought under Health and Safety legislation. It is pretty unhealthy and unsafe to have seven bullet-holes in your head...

Oliver Kamm calls for Blair to be sacked if he will not resign, recalling Kamm's own comments on the Commissioner written eighteen months ago:

From the outset of the de Menezes inquiry — literally from the day of Mr de Menezes’s death — the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has given an unmistakable impression of a lack of seriousness. Sir Ian wrote to the Home Office immediately after the killing to say he would not allow access to Stockwell station for IPCC staff. It is not a witch-hunt, but a response to a man lacking a sense of public duty, to demand that restitution to the de Menezes family start with Sir Ian’s dismissal.

This is exactly right.  The failures of the Metropolitan Police demand a serious response, and honourable leadership.  The honourable course of action is for Sir Ian to resign.  Sadly, as Kamm and Guido Fawkes point out in their own inimitable styles, the Commissioner has demonstrated a greater attachment to his career than his sense of public service.  New Labour's favourite policeman has laways exuded the aura of politician far more than that of the country's leading copper.  London deserves better - and so does the Metropolitan Police.  It is time for Sir Ian to do the decent thing: it is time for new leadership at the Met.

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