Why the Operation Midland whitewash should frighten us all

‘Nobody’ is found to be at fault, followed by our old friend, ‘lessons will be learned’ Heidi Allen and her disloyal ilk were always fake Tories

You know when you’ve reached a point where things are so mental that you think nothing can shock you any more? Then along comes a report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) on Scotland Yard’s investigation into an imaginary Westminster paedophile ring. The report not only clears five officers of misconduct, it concludes brightly that the utter shambles, the monstrous trashing of reputations, the shameful lack of basic policing, the millions wasted, the preference for lies over truth, the trusting the word of a fantasist over that of a distinguished soldier, can be seen as “an opportunity for organisational learning”.

Lunatics taking over the asylum we can just about live with, but selfsatisfied, management-speak morons in the highest echelons of the police monitored by a toothless watchdog? That is truly frightening for each and every one of us. If an Army officer had tried to tell Field Marshal Lord Bramall, accused by Carl Beech of torturing children, that some battlefield cock-up was an “opportunity for learning”, he’d have been court-martialled.

Compare the response of Dame Cressida Dick to the police watchdog’s “whitewash” of the disastrous Operation Midland. “I recognise our mistakes will have a lasting effect on those who endured intrusive inquiries,” the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police admitted. “This is a matter of great regret for me.”

Alas, Dame Cressida is not so sorry that she understands why the fools who oversaw one of those most inept police operations in history need to be made an example of to restore confidence in her tarnished force. As is all-too common when public services look into their own failings, that well-known culprit “Nobody” is discovered to be at fault. “Mistakes having been made” – applied as a soothing balm to national disquiet – followed by our old friend “lessons will be learned”.

While the IOPC does indeed acknowledge that “mistakes” were made when the Met followed their own policy and “believed” the “victim”, Beech, when he said that Lord Bramall, former home secretary Leon Brittan and ex-mp Harvey Proctor, among other VIPS, had raped and murdered children, those errors had nothing to do with actual police officers working on the case. Dearie me, no. It was “gaps in processes and systems”.

See what they did there? Detectives are no longer to be held accountable for appalling lapses in judgment, like the one that led to 95-year-old D-day hero Edwin Bramall being terrorised in his own home. It’s the system that failed

them, apparently. After BBC News’s lengthy apologia this week for perpetrators of knife crime, I’m surprised Dame Cressida didn’t deploy the fashionable excuse and claim her poor coppers suffered from inadequate parenting and a lack of youth clubs.

When former High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques accused the IOPC of a “lamentable and inadequate” inquiry, as well as pinpointing 43 separate mistakes made during Operation Midland, you would have thought it was a safe bet that, in its report, the watchdog would severely censure all concerned. Sir Richard had been aghast when the IOPC’S lead investigator belatedly got in touch and admitted she had no legal training and didn’t even understand how police applied for a search warrant. (Sir Richard’s concern that search warrants had been applied for illegally was central to his case.)

Five officers were supposed to be under investigation, but four were never questioned. The one who was, got promotion and retired before she was officially cleared. At least if they ever make Carry On Police Watchdog, no one will have to invent any jokes.

Behind this grotesque farce lies a serious flaw in the criminal justice system. A curious nine-year-old would have rumbled Beech faster than five adult detectives. Why? Because the child would realise that a story so far-fetched was probably made up. According to the IOPC, officers were “under immense pressure to do the right thing”. They would not have gone to the lengths they did, “had it not been with the intention of maintaining public confidence, particularly in view of the damaging impact of the Jimmy Savile and other high-profile cases”.

To put it less flatteringly, after Savile got away with mass sexual abuse, police were eager to believe self-styled “victims” like Beech, because, in that way, they could restore their own battered reputation. Even if it meant failing to properly investigate pleas of innocence from distinguished old men. Even if it meant not bothering to look at Beech’s computer, where they would have found child pornography.

Dame Cressida said something more revealing than she knew. Listening to the radio in December 2014, she heard Det Supt Kenny Mcdonald say: “We believe what ‘Nick’ (Beech) is saying is credible and true.” It was “a mistake”, she recalled thinking.

Notice that she didn’t say it was “wrong” for an officer to state, quite disgracefully, that they had effectively abandoned a cornerstone of our legal system, that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. It was just a mistake to reveal their new

“we believe the victim, so we won’t try too hard to prove the guilty are innocent” policy in public.

Priti Patel simply cannot allow this appalling whitewash to go unchallenged. I met her at the Conservative party conference and was struck by how, for once, a Home Secretary’s attitude to crime and punishment actually coincides with that of the voters. But the public won’t feel safe if officers aren’t disciplined for a shocking investigation that hounded the innocent and cushioned the guilty.

A good start would be to replace the feeble IOPC with a watchdog that knows what it’s doing; Sir Richard would be an excellent person to set that up. The complacent mantra of “believe the victim” needs to be replaced by “treat the accuser with respect”. And Operation Midland should not be regarded as an “opportunity for organisational learning”, but as a shameful low point.

As for Dame Cressida, the Home Secretary might usefully inquire how she came to be running a Met that, during Operation Midland, owed more to Benny Hill than Robert Peel. When I placed my cross next to the name Heidi Allen back in 2017, I was under the illusion that I was voting Conservative. More fool me. A former chairman of the local Tory constituency association put me right. “What do you think of Heidi?” I inquired brightly over lunch. “Lib Dem,” she snapped. Very wise woman is Dorothy.

Well, at long last, Ms Allen has joined her party, the Liberal Democrats, the fourth Conservative MP to do so this year. That means 36 per cent of Lib Dem MPS sitting in Parliament are not elected but, hey, who has time to fret about democracy when there’s a massive vote by the British people to be revoked?

Allen claims she has received “thousands” of emails of support from her constituents, which will come as a surprise to the people of South Cambridgeshire I have spoken to. Is this the same Heidi Allen who told them: “It’s wrong for us as democratic leaders to be picking and choosing results we don’t like”?

As if that weren’t insult enough to the dedicated volunteers who campaigned for her, Allen announced on Monday that there are 20 more “one-nation Tories” who would like to copy her and defect.

How dare she appropriate the term One Nation Conservative for her sly, self-serving purposes. The nation voted for a Conservative manifesto which, quite specifically, said it would deliver Brexit. Attempting to brand the Tories who are fighting to keep that promise as “far Right” is despicable. A clear majority of Conservatives voted to leave; we are not the extremists. Allen and her disloyal ilk were always fake Tories. It suited them to pretend to be Conservatives and they didn’t care how many people’s trust they betrayed, so long as it advanced their career.

Jo Swinson had better watch out. How long do you reckon Allen will be content to play the supportive bridesmaid to the Lib Dem leader? I give it a year.

Self-serving: how long will Heidi Allen be happy as a supportive Lib Dem?