The police should keep out of politics

The Damian Green saga began with the unprecedented raid of an MP’S office in 2008 and ended with the sacking of a deputy prime minister in 2017. Whatever Mr Green did or did not do, this narrative raises alarming questions about the politicisation of the police – questions Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, must see answered.

This story began badly, when the then Labour government asked the police to help plug leaks at the Home Office, and went downhill from there. Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick permitted the arrest of Mr Green and his parliamentary office was searched without a warrant. After an investigation that cost £5 million, Mr Green was released without charge and Mr Quick was humiliated.

Nearly ten years later, Mr Green was accused of sexual harassment – and out of the blue, a retired police officer, Neil Lewis, who was in communication with Mr Quick, said pornography was found on Mr Green’s computer in 2008, and he had held onto data he was supposed to destroy. That the police might keep something embarrassing on a politician for a rainy day is shocking. That Mr Green was brought down not by the initial claim of harassment but by his lack of honesty about the pornography suggests that the police eventually got their man.

The NHS speaks of “never events”, things that shouldn’t happen and, when they do, demand action. This is an obvious example – and it points to a wider institutional crisis within the police. Ms Dick has to address two problems. First, the Met’s enslavement to a Left-wing political agenda; its compiling of so-called hate crimes and obsession with historic abuse allegations at the expense of day-to-day policing.

Second, beyond referring Mr Quick and Mr Lewis to the Information Commissioner, Ms Dick has to show that the kind of abuses demonstrated in the Green case will have consequences. Retirement cannot put officers beyond sanction. If their behaviour is implicitly tolerated, faith in the police will be damaged – when it has already been weakened by prosecutions that should never have been brought, ineptitude and rising violent crime. Three of Ms Dick’s recent predecessors have bowed out early, embroiled in politics. The public wants a police force that pursues criminals, not politicians it happens to dislike. We accept letters by post, fax and email only. Please include name, address, work and home telephone numbers.

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