The Met is being torn apart by its own war

Instead of innocent families seeing armed officers burst into their living rooms, there have been dozens of successful prosecutions. So good have the police become, I read the director of MI5's estimate last month that 2,000 potential terrorists were at large as a warning against complacency. The authorities can't be lucky all the time.

At least some credit must go to Andy Hayman, the Met's head of counter-terrorism. He and his fellow officers not only made arrests but also made the case for tougher laws far better than successive Home Secretaries. Earlier this year I was stopped in my tracks and forced to reconsider dearly held civil libertarian beliefs when I heard Hayman's deputy, Peter Clarke, describe how suicide bombers were different from every other type of criminal the Met had encountered.

So there you had it. Hard-headed officers were confronting an unprecedented threat and making as good a fist of it as anyone had a right to expect. Until yesterday, that is, when Hayman resigned and we caught a glimpse of a police service driven half mad by office politics.

I don't know what to say about the accusations against him. As a journalist, I understand that no reporter can resist reports that he'd been close to an officer with the fantastically exotic name of Sergeant Heidi Tubby. But I notice there have been no specific allegations.

A few weeks ago, I heard Ken Livingstone defend Hayman from accusations of fiddling expenses by pointing out that as recently as the late Nineties no one checked whether the Met was wasting money or not. I'm not sure Livingstone's defence will wash with many readers. Rules are rules, after all, and if the police don't uphold them, why should anyone else? But, again, I don't know what to make of the charges as nothing was proved.

I do know that leaks on the scale Hayman has endured speak of a chaotic organisation. When Channel 4 News alleged last night that Hayman had made hundreds of calls to one of the investigators into the death of de Menezes, one of his colleagues sounded close to despair when he responded by saying Hayman was an able man whose career had been killed by politicking. "There's no support. None of these things are hanging offences, and Hayman is adamant he has done nothing wrong. But it wouldn't go away and he felt that he had to do the right thing and walk away from it."

Even if we had the best police force in the world, it couldn't protect us from every bomber. As it is, I have an awful feeling that the Met's senior officers are as interested in fighting each other as fighting terrorism.