8th April 2022
Every so often, and without irony, you will hear the phrase “treated like a political football”.
You will also hear, about some area of human activity, that “the politics should be taken out of” it – say, health or social care or education.
There is something in such a proposition – and there are certain fundamental principles, especially about human autonomy and dignity, where there should not be politics.
For example, whether someone should be tortured or not should really not be a matter for political debate.
But.
Because it is such a nod-along phrase – the sort which will get people saying “of course” or even clap and cheer – then it is a phrase that will tend to be misused.
And it is often misused by those who do not want there to be accountability for their uses of state power.
The goal of many with state power is to be free from any practical accountability, just as it is the goal of many businesses to be free from competition.
To have a check and a balance – to have things contested – is not what many with state power want.
Sometimes such opposition to accountability is effected with laws and processes – for example the undermining of freedom of information.
Sometimes it is done linguistically – with phrases such “politicisation”.
And here we come to the departure today of Cressida Dick from Scotland Yard.
Dick is the best leader the Police Federation never had.
A shop steward, not a police commissioner – Dick confused the interests of the police with the interests of the public.
And so when public confidence was lost in her (shop) stewardship, she had to resign.
In her farewell letter, Dick criticises the “politicisation of policing”.
What Dick is really criticising is accountability for policing.
And if you make that change, the rest of her resignation letter makes a lot more sense.
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You are right that no public authorities should claim to be immune from accountability, but I think it’s also true that accountability in the Met is a mess:
* A local force performing national functions accountable to the Home Secretary; and
* A local force performing local functions accountable to the Mayor
Layer on top a force that massively overestimates its competence, accepts gongs left right and centre, doesn’t tackle basic housekeeping (Charing Cross) and disrupts neighbouring forces by paying significantly in excess of their rates, and you can see that change is needed at every level.
All good, solid points.
What I find strange about Dick is that she seems oblivious to the issues you correctly identify and continues to portray herself a a successful police leader who unfairly became a victim. I assume she really believes the truth of this, which indicates a remarkable lack of perspective.
Have to agree with your comments.
Cressida Dick has not endeared herself to the public and during her tenure provided no panacea for the continued lack of public confidence in the Metropolitan Police.
The question of which areas of policing (or indeed of economic activity) should be the subject of political debate is itself a political one. The view of the police on where the boundary should be drawn is obviously important but should not be decisive.
The Met went from bad to worse under Iain Blair.
When asked why he didn’t implement the recommendations in the Stephen Lawrence enquiry he responded “we had just been through a difficult enquiry, I felt that was enough”.
Promoting the Senior Officer in charge of the Jean Charles de Menezes killing, can be seen as an extention of the establishment.
All in evidence when she authorised the killing of Jean Paul de Menezes.
This is one absolute case of where there has been an LME creaming themselves to appoint a woman who is also a homosexual. Her clear inabilities to fulfil the role were apparent.
Some plaudits due to Mayor Khan for eventually pulling the rug from under this no-mark, reptilian commissioner, who relied on her privileged connections, and served them well.
I will file her time served under the other mistaken belief, that “If we had a female PM, she would be more likely to unite the country”, as one that ignores the masculine qualities that propel such individuals to these roles.
Policing in London has never been so overtly exposed for what it has become: racist, misogynist, classist, corrupt, incompetent and increasingly militaristic.
It is four months to the day since Susan Gray’s report was commissioned.
Approximately two months ago Gray said her final report was all but finished but could not be published because of the ongoing Police Investigation
Cressida Dick earlier expressed the hope that her investigation would be concluded before she left office.
Today Cressida Dick has left the building and hardworking Brexit taxpayers are still in the dark about both matters.
It is true it can be argued that Dick is still in situ because she is being paid holiday pay until late April but do not hold your breath that both matters will be concluded and in the public domain by then.
What I found out about this that – according to a news item – she was applauded on the way out. (I don’t think they meant ironically.)
I’d always assumed she was hated – and that was why there was so much bad behaviour but it DAG’s version is perhaps more convincing.
I also assumed misogyny was involved but perhaps not – but then, again, misogyny and incompetence could both be factors as one doesn’t prevent the other.
As with so many public figures, the lack of self-awareness is stunning.
I think she was a talented copper. But she loved the Met too much and defended it when she should have held her organisation to higher standards.
The fact that Dick ever became Commissioner was a scandal. I don’t think she should have been prosecuted for causing Jean-Charles de Menezes’s death – as I am in absolutely no doubt that she did – but I do think that a decent institution would at the very least have edged her quietly towards the door, not allowed her to fail upwards. But the Metropolitan Police’s response to the de Menezes shooting was to close ranks and protect its own, even if this meant lying on the public record and slandering an innocent man – and absolving the person who’d ordered his shooting as surely as if she’d said “go down there, get someone to hold him down and shoot him in the head at least six times at thirty-second intervals”.
This isn’t just a kneejerk response on my part to seeing the name “Cressida Dick” (although I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an element of that). The larger point is that it wasn’t just a question of Dick making the wrong call under pressure, or the Met’s press office being more concerned with the force’s image than with veracity, or Ian Blair repeating a prepared statement without asking anyone to check it. Once all these things had happened – and nobody had suffered any comeback for them – they became part of the status quo which the Met as an institution was committed to maintaining. This is the great problem with institutional wrongdoing: it can never really be a one-off, because whatever is done by and in the name of the institution becomes part of the institution’s culture, which it then perpetuates as it reproduces itself. It corrupts, in other words.
The Met needed root and branch reform in 2005. Perhaps Dick’s departure will mean that it can finally get it, but I’m not hopeful – and the need is seventeen years greater now.
This veteran of the Anti-Apartheid Campaign soon became suspicious and the then sick to death of the phrase, “Keep politics out of….” No convincing excuse was ever offered. It was a blatant red herring. It still is. If any area of life can be legislated about in any way, it is political.
To politicise matters more, the new Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis will when appointed be entitled to be paid nearly £300,000 pa. That seems … quite high. It is approaching twice the salary of the prime minister, for example; about 3.5 times the salary of an MP, and about 50% more than the Cabinet Secretary.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61093763
That said, the “high earner” list of civil servants includes several others paid even more: over £600,000 for the chief executive of the HS2 delivery programme (although to be fair that does include an amount in lieu of pension contributions – but I wonder if he has already reached the lifetime allowance anyway, so this is a better deal for him), over £500,000 for the chief executive of Network Rail, and over £400,000 for Network Rail’s CFO (for an accountant!).
Between £300k and £400k are the CEO and the COO of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency and the CEO of Sellafield, eight more executives of Network Rail (one part time: this is the amount after pro-rating), and the CEO of the Highways Agency. What is is about rail and nuclear companies that mean their executives must be paid so much? Are there really no candidates would would be prepared to take less?
Below all of these is General Nick Carter as Chief of the Defence Staff, the CEO of the NHS, and the Cabinet Secretary, all between £200k and £300k.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/senior-officials-high-earners-salaries
No cost of living crisis for them, I trust.