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Cressida Dick may well be “the finest police officer of her generation”, as Lord Blair, one of her predecessors as Metropolitan Commissioner, once described her. Yet even if she deserved to

lose her job, the circumstances of her departure are deeply disturbing. The forced resignation of Dame Cressida by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, in the midst of the Downing Street

investigation marks a watershed in the politicisation of policing in this country. To understand why, a brief history is required. It is, of course, true that there was a precedent for the

Mayor’s decision to withdraw his confidence from the Commissioner — a precedent set by none other than Boris Johnson. In 2008 the newly-elected Mayor effectively fired Sir Ian Blair, as he

then was, as London’s police chief. At the time, there were tensions between the first (and so far only) Conservative to be elected to run the capital and a Commissioner thought by some to

share more than just a surname with the New Labour Prime Minister. But there was a certain logic to the incoming Mayor’s demand for a fresh face at New Scotland Yard to carry out the tougher

policies with which he had just defeated Ken Livingstone. There may have been a personality clash between Johnson and Blair, but their differences were mainly about the policing of London.

The dismissal of Dame Cressida is quite different from that of Lord Blair or any previous Commissioner, in that it is almost entirely motivated by politics. Lord Blair’s successor, Sir Paul

Stephenson, resigned after only three years over the 2011 phone hacking affair, when it emerged that he was close to one of the journalists arrested. Bernard Hogan-Howe, who had served as

Chief Constable of Merseyside and as one of HM’s Inspectors of Constabulary, was approved by both the Mayor and the Home Secretary. His retirement in 2017 came at his own request, though it

coincided with the election of new Mayor in 2016. His successor was Cressida Dick. Her appointment was approved by both Sadiq Khan and the then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. Though she was the

outstanding candidate, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. In 2005, as Gold Commander in the immediate aftermath of London’s worst ever terrorist attack, she had given the order to

shoot a suspected suicide bomber, Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian. Though she was exonerated by subsequent inquiries, in 2014 Lord Hogan-Howe had ousted her as head of

counterterrorism. She then spent more than two years in a secret security role at the Foreign Office, which prepared her to deal with the evolving terrorist threat from Isis. As the nation’s

most senior police officer for nearly five years, including the pandemic, Dame Cressida can look back on a stellar career. Even before the outstanding achievement of becoming the first

woman to lead the Met, as London’s most senior counterterrorism officer she had managed the transitional period when the main terrorist threat changed from the Irish republicans to

Islamists. She had to deal with three major attacks in her first year as Commissioner alone. After that baptism of fire, it is greatly to her credit that London has been largely spared from

terrorist attacks since 2017. Perhaps it goes with the territory that Met Commissioners are always criticised for fighting the last war. When Cressida Dick took over, terrorism was the

number one priority, both for politicians and the public. If that is no longer the case, she has been a victim of her own success. Rampant teenage gangs, knife crime and sexual assaults now

loom larger in politics. The Commissioner was obliged to carry the can for Operation Midland, though she had been only tangentially involved in this botched investigation into a “VIP

paedophile ring” that resulted from allegations by a fantasist. More serious have been persistent allegations of institutional discrimination and corruption in the Met. As the first Asian

Mayor of one of the most multicultural capitals in the world, Sadiq Khan was bound to demand tough action against any evidence of prejudice in the police. Though Cressida Dick herself has

been above suspicion in this respect, the rare case of a police officer convicted of rape and murder has undermined public trust. The Wayne Couzens case revealed that a few investigating

police officers had shared WhatsApp messages that were in some cases not merely distasteful but criminal. The emergence of other such groups, most recently at Charing Cross police station,

was depicted by some sections of the media as evidence of a widespread and deeply-rooted culture of racism, sexism, homophobia and other attitudes that are damaging the Met’s reputation.

Some have alleged that the failure to root out such prejudices is indicative of a deeply corrupt force in which officers cover up for each other. There is no real evidence for such

allegations, though there is certainly a need to offer incentives for whistleblowers and disincentives for protecting rotten apples. All large organisations with a strong corporate ethos are

prone to such misconduct and cover-ups, from banks and armed services to churches and charities. One need only think of the BBC’s appalling record of institutional obfuscation in the case

of Martin Bashir, which lasted two decades and went right to the top of the Corporation. The low-level misogyny and racism revealed in the Met over recent months is hardly comparable in

gravity. In any case, Dame Cressida had presented detailed proposals for cracking down on such behaviour. Ever since Peel’s day, the Metropolitan Police have been seen as citizens in

uniform. They should be judged, not on the fact that officers occasionally prove to be unfit to wear that uniform, but on how the service deals with them. There must be an overwhelming

suspicion that such cultural and institutional justifications for the Mayor’s hostility to Dame Cressida are a pretext rather than the real reason. She has refused to spell out the reasons

why she felt she had to leave so abruptly, a few weeks after being reappointed. But the coincidence of her departure with the Downing Street investigation into Partygate is surely

significant. Sadiq Khan has also been tight-lipped. But this is a scandal that the Labour Party, aided and abetted by the BBC and others, hopes will bring down a Prime Minister and,

ultimately, the Government. The stakes could not be higher. It would not be surprising if a Labour Mayor of London had either put pressure on the Commissioner over the investigation or else

decided to replace her with someone perhaps more susceptible to such pressure. Nor would it be surprising if that Commissioner, who has a justified reputation for political impartiality, had

felt that she could not carry on under such circumstances. We do not yet know what was said between the two. But the mere fact that the woman responsible for the investigation has been

forced out is a warning that British policing is in grave danger of being politicised in the way that it has long been in the US and in many European countries. Dame Cressida leaves with her

head held high. Sadiq Khan will gain plaudits from the _Guardian_-reading classes who have always treated the police with suspicion and find fault with everything they do. But the general

public will feel uneasy about the way in which the vast majority of officers of the Met have been condemned for institutional failings of which they are innocent. They have been deprived of

a chief who enjoyed broad support among both police and public. The new Commissioner has been handed the hottest of potatoes in the Downing Street investigation. He or she is bound to come

under huge pressure but without the unique experience that Dame Cressida brought to the job. A politicised police force is in the interests of nobody. If that is the eventual result of this

crisis, the buck will stop with Mayor Khan. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one

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