SAFE PAIR OF HANDS? NO, HE WAS A DEAD MAN WALKING

THE shortcomings of Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe as Commissioner of the Met are expected to be laid bare with the publication of the report into the Operation Midland inquiry. But his position already looked precarious, and it seemed only a matter of time before he followed his predecessors in leaving Britain’s top police post early. Here, we reveals how he fell from grace.

TOP COP WHO RAN OUT OF ALLIES

BOTH Hogan-Howe’s predecessors, Sir Ian Blair and Sir Paul Stephenson, had stepped down early because of scandals or blunders. The new commissioner, a clever, tough talking northerner who had old fashioned ideas about crime and punishment, was initially perceived as a much needed safe pair of hands.

But by february this year, Hogan-Howe, 58, was a dead man walking. Theresa May, who was then Home Secretary, announced then that he was to be given only a 12-month extension when his original five-year £280,000 contract expired this month.

Hogan-Howe had wanted to stay on another three years, which would have made him one of the longest serving commissioners ever. He did not realise quite how badly he had been damaged.

Mrs May had once been a staunch supporter, but her perception of him shifted. Operation Midland was not the only fiasco on HoganHowe’s watch. His credit had run out and he had grown short of powerful allies. When he sat alongside Mrs May at a police gala dinner this spring fellow guests noted that the pair hardly exchanged a word all evening.

The irony is that politicking is something upon which Hogan-Howe has long prided himself.

Having joined his local South Yorkshire force in 1979 he first achieved senior rank on Merseyside before being was promoted to Assistant Commissioner at the Met in 2001. He returned to Merseyside as chief constable and after a spell as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary became Met Commissioner in September 2011.

£100M PERSECUTION OF THE PRESS

Before the top job was in the bag Sir Bernard had assiduously courted those in the media who could be of use to his ambition. The hypocrisy of this charm offensive of private drinks and lunches would not be forgotten by those journalists when, shortly after Hogan-Howe became commissioner, the shutters came down and he went to war on the popular press.

‘Proportionality’ has long been a keyword at new Scotland Yard; you would not send 50 officers to attend a small road traffic accident.

How then to explain Hogan-Howe’s prosecution of Operations Elveden, Weeting and Tuleta, which the Met set up in response to the news of the World phone hacking scandal? The force had been criticised in the past for going soft on investigating allegations against journalists. HoganHowe was not going to be ‘soft’.

In 2011-12 scores of journalists and their contacts, who included policemen, were arrested by his officers. The suspects were often summoned from their beds in heavy-handed dawn raids as if they were dangerous gangsters. Sometimes the police involved were drawn from already overstretched anti-terror and murder teams. At its height 195 officers were dedicated to the press investigation.

But what did they show for it? Of the dozens of journalists arrested under Operation Elveden – the investigation into press payments to public officials – only two were ever convicted, one of whom is appealing.

Some of those arrested were on bail for years before their cases went to trial. Many cases were thrown out before reaching that stage. Journalists lost their jobs and homes, their health was ruined and more than £100 million was spent in public money and defence costs.

Relations between press and police hit a new low and officers were very wary of talking to journalists. Critics saw the exercise as an attack on press freedom. ‘Proportionality’ had become a joke. But Hogan-Howe was unmoved.

£2M SEX ABUSE WITCH-HUNT

Indeed, he was to repeat his error in a second high profile and highly politicised investigation. Operation Midland was launched in the autumn of 2014 when a middle-aged man, whom the police called ‘nick’ to protect his identity, made a number of startling allegations.

nick claimed that as a boy he had been sexually abused by a ring of public figures at, among other places, an apartment block in Dolphin Square, close to Westminster. Among those he named were former MP Harvey Proctor, former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath and the former Chief of Defence Staff Lord Bramall.

nick’s most extraordinary and disturbing allegation was that the VIP gang had murdered three other abused boys. Hogan-Howe’s men swung into action in a style with all the hallmarks of the press-related overkill.

Brittan, who died of cancer in January 2015 aged 75, was interviewed over a rape allegation. He died not knowing that police had concluded he had no case to answer.

The home of Lord Bramall, a 92year-old normandy veteran with a wife in the last stages of dementia, was searched by 20 officers and he was interviewed under caution. Before they had even had time to corroborate nick’s story the head of the Met investigation had said that the police believed nick and that his claims were ‘credible and true.’ Hogan-Howe later said that Midland was ‘a very thorough and professional inquiry’.

In March this year Operation Midland was closed. It had cost £2 million. no evidence had been found to support nick’s outlandish fantasies.

Hogan-Howe commissioned the Henriques report and no doubt hoped the fuss would die away. His efforts to distance himself from the day-to-day mechanics of the inquiry did him no credit.

A LEGACY IN TATTERS

Yesterday’s Met press statement about Hogan-Howe’s departure did not mention Operation Midland. Instead it claimed that crime in London had fallen by 18 per cent since he became commissioner. The commissioner has also defended police numbers against budget cuts.

But what of the headline achievements during his time in office?

Two of the Met’s biggest successes were in fact the legacy of previous regimes. The January 2012 conviction of two of the racist killers of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, 19 years after his murder, were due to police work carried out years before. The ‘safe Olympics’ which HoganHowe ‘delivered’ in 2012 and for which he in part received his knighthood, was an operation that had similarly been five years in the planning.

now, Hogan-Howe’s most remarkable legacy is quite how isolated a figure he is as he leaves his job.

After the London mayoral elections in May he could no longer look to City Hall for support. It was an open secret that the new Labour mayor Sadiq Khan did not want to have as his police commissioner a man soclosely linked to his Tory predecessor Boris Johnson. Hogan-Howe’s decision to go early is one of the wisest he has made.