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After refusing to walk, in a manner reminiscent of Stuart Broad batting against the Australians in the 2013 Ashes, the West Midlands chief constable Craig Guildford has finally accepted the inevitable and retired with ill-concealed reluctance from his post. He had little alternative.
On Wednesday the Home Office had released a critical report by the chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Andy Cooke, into the way West Midlands police supported banning Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from attending a fixture in Birmingham against Aston Villa. The same day, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, told the Commons that she no longer had confidence in Mr Guildford. The chief constable tried to face down the criticism. But, on Friday, he quit.
The case is important on two levels. One is professional standards. As the Cooke report shows, West Midlands police did an inadequate job weighing the case for a ban. It found that much of the evidence on which they based their decision was sloppily compiled, with an unreliable AI tool – leading the force to overstate the threat from the Israeli fans. For these reasons alone, Mr Guildford was right to step down.
Yet the case raises a wider constitutional questions about policing in Britain. Under a 2011 act, Ms Mahmood has no legal power to sack Mr Guildford. That rests instead with the local police and crime commissioner, who had chosen not to use it. Ms Mahmood’s announcement has achieved its goal simply by political pressure.
Such pressure has its place. But it is getting too common. It echoes two modern sackings of commissioners of London’s Metropolitan police. In 2008, the London mayor Boris Johnson withdrew confidence from the late Ian Blair. In 2022, Sadiq Khan did the same thing to remove Cressida Dick. No mayor has absolute sacking power over the commissioner, but no commissioner can withstand the loss of mayoral support.
Policing has become more party political. Sensitive reform of the 2011 act would aim to reduce that trend. The question is whether the government’s plan to abolish the PCCs and give sacking powers to the home secretary will now achieve that. Should police chiefs in high-profile posts have to suck it up when politicians turn on them as if they were football managers after a string of defeats?
Throughout recent English history, policing has been an essentially local function, to be exercised and controlled locally. Fear of French-style centralisation meant relations between police constables, chief officers, local authorities, the magistracy and the Home Office evolved unevenly, with London always treated differently from the rest. A succession of statutes, most recently in 2011, have sought some consistency. But the tension is unresolved. Ms Mahmood’s language suggests her new bill, due soon, will be a centralising measure, at a time when local government is already being weakened and restructured.
There is obviously a case for greater centralisation, or alternatively for regionalisation, of police. But the local system has survived because it can work and because it makes police, and police chiefs, more responsive. This can go wrong, as it did over the Maccabi ban. But it can also be improved. When such important issues are at stake, the country needs a careful debate, not a lurch into reforms that may be premature and open to partisan abuse.
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