Morning:
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Emergency! Another outbreak of foot -in-mouth at the Metropolitan Police. Never mind the terror threat, how to keep the crime figures down or our fears of "low level" (in reality, highly discomfiting) anti-social behaviour on the streets.
Senior management in New Scotland Yard are once again preoccupied by the behaviour of one of their own top officers.
Bob Quick, the Assistant Commissioner for counter-terrorism, thinks that a wicked Tory media plot was to blame for an attempt to "corrupt" his investigation into leaks to the Opposition over the Government's immigration measures and (now defunct) 42-days legislation.
Here is a classic case of a professional figure who should be the soul of discretion splurging ill-thought out views into the public domain.
What can one say to the defence of his erstwhile colleague that he was merely reacting with "a rush of blood to the head" after The Mail on Sunday had published embarrassing details of his wife's business interests?
The anti- terror boss is not expected to be some excitable character whose judgment lapses at the first provocation by the papers. At the very least, he has forfeited his right to remain in charge of this investigation, since his animus against the Conservatives is now superabundantly clear.
I do not share the view that there should be no inquiry into the leaks that landed Tory MP Damian Green in trouble. Yes, they are part and parcel of the political scrap and can serve a useful purpose.
But those who participate in them or mastermind them, to the extent of priming or coaching others on how to deliver confidential information (if Mr Green is finally proven to have done so), must also be prepared to endure some heat themselves when that suspicion comes to light.
However, the Met and its senior officers must also expect their conduct in a politically sensitive case to come under critical scrutiny. Really, Mr Green would have had to have been Guy Fawkes to merit the manner of his arrest and ransacking of his parliamentary offices.
So for Assistant Commissioner Quick to complain about a hostile press in the wake of such a badly conceived police operation is a sign of staggering immaturity, as well as an ill-controlled temper, for someone of his rank.
It all falls too uncomfortably into a pattern. Senior policemen have been lured - or allowed their vanity to lure them - into comments on anything that occurs to them, with little concern for its relevance to the way they do the job they are paid to do.
From a clumsy critique of media reaction, to the murder of two small girls in Soham (Sir Ian Blair's prizewinning pratfall), to Tarique Ghaffur's bizarre claims that a service that has bent over backwards to rid itself of racism and prejudice is in fact bent on stopping his career rise solely on the grounds of colour, and now to Mr Quick, this culture of blurt-and-retract is damaging.
Tone is given from the top in such things. Sir Ian's fondness for the public statement trickled down into a culture in which just about anyone with a place in the Met hierarchy feels that they deserve their moment in front of the microphone.
This is the London police service, not The X Factor.
The first thing a new head of the Met should insist on his appointment next year is that his staff zip it, and get on with the job.
When top officers show such poor judgment, how are their subordinates and the rest of us supposed to react? One of the quickest ways for the police to lose authority is for the public to conclude that those charged with keeping us safe are, in fact, preoccupied with their own pet causes and crusades.
Sir Paul Stephenson, one of the leading candidates for the job (if he has not blown it already by authorising the Green raid), was a strong private critic of Sir Ian's publicity addiction.
He also spoke in very welcome clear terms, after the verdict in the de Menezes case, about the terrible wrong that was done that day to the victim and issued a straight and unambiguous apology, without all the hedging and special pleading we have come to expect.
One drawback: he is a northerner and one who sometimes gives the impression that he is not yet entirely at home in London, despite a longish stint here. The Met chief's is a vital symbolic job in the capital.
When the bombs went off on 7/7, it is not to the politicians' platitudes we turned for reassurance but to the man in the Commissioner's braid.
Anyone who wants to run the Met has to have, or be prepared to acquire, an affinity with the city he serves and it is not so far clear to me that Sir Paul possesses this or understands its importance.
It is said that the Mayor would prefer a "copper's copper" to allow the limelight to fall only on himself: but the Met needs to be headed by a confident and empathetic face too.
This reservation prods my interest in Sir Hugh Orde: a wily political operator no doubt but a thoroughly impressive figure in Northern Ireland because he so readily immersed himself in the culture around him.
Before the British-born jihadists hit the mainland, I heard Orde gave a briefing on the twin-track task of combining the security side of policing with the necessity of easing relations with the communities in which the terrorists have their emotional and political roots.
It remains one of the clearest expositions of successful anti-terror work I have heard and explains Orde's high standing in Whitehall.
His only (known) peccadillo is fathering a child in a relationship outside his marriage, which compared to many of the professional lapses around him strikes me as excusable, so long as he does not make a habit of it.
The Met likes what it knows, for which reason most senior figures there seem rather keener on Sir Paul than an outsider (though Orde has a long track record in London on his CV).
The important thing is that the next Commissioner is prepared to draw a line under the self-pitying and self-referential culture that has built up.
Few of us want to see the Met dragging itself through the mire with a regularity that verges on the comical.
It does one of the most difficult and important jobs in the country and it deserves credit for its successes - not least in terror prevention - as well as brickbats for its failures.
What it cannot expect, though, is our sympathy when it emerges that wasting police time is an offence all too often committed by senior policemen themselves.
Reader views (1)
A counter terrorism officer having his name revealed to terrorists how petty to get worked up about that.
Anyway next we reveal SAS, and MI5 officers addresses for a funny practical joke. I hope they will not be immature enough to complain about us giving their addresses away. They should grow up. Well done tories you have shut the coppoer up. Job done.
- Dirty European Socialist, UK, 24/12/2008 23:50
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