Is anyone policing the police in Britain?

THE Roman poet Juvenal once asked the rhetorical question: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’, or ‘Who guards the guards?’

That is pertinent indeed as the stench from one of the most disgraceful chapters in the Metropolitan Police’s history lingers and spreads. Today, it is posed by Sir Richard Henriques in a damning condemnation of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

After the eminent retired High Court judge wrote a damning 2016 report exposing the abysmal failings in Scotland Yard’s bungled VIP child-sex ring investigation, the watchdog was tasked with scrutinising the conduct of five officers.

Not only had detectives declared the deranged allegations ‘credible and true’, they duped a judge to secure illegal search warrants. By giving myopic credence to a paedophile’s preposterous fantasies, the Met destroyed innocent lives and cost taxpayers £4.5million.

Now, as the IOPC’s report is – finally – published today, Sir Richard dismisses it as an ‘alarming’ whitewash. In a crushing verdict, he brands its inquiry late and lamentably inadequate, hampering further criminal investigations into the outrage.

Incredibly, despite his unrivalled knowledge of the case, he wasn’t interviewed for nearly two years – and then only on the phone by someone barely out of short trousers. That not a single officer has been punished for this entire cavalier and calamitous scandal truly beggars belief.

Certainly not the then Met chief Bernard Hogan-Howe, who was rewarded with a place in the Lords. Nor Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse, promoted to a gold-plated post at Britain’s ‘FBI’.

And definitely not Operation Midland’s original leader, Cressida Dick, now Met Commissioner. Cravenly, she’s vanished, leaving her unimpressive No 2 Sir Stephen House to read out churlish statements.

Preservation of law and order is contingent on effective oversight of those handed power. Here we have a dysfunctional force supervised by a dysfunctional watchdog. Who guards the guards indeed? Home Secretary Priti Patel must reflect upon this 2,000-year-old question urgently.