The British public was “expecting to be surprised” by the first tranche of the Mandelson files, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. Yet despite hopes for “damning correspondence” to be in the 147-page document, “there was very little I didn’t already know”.

As it turned out “the first drop of the Mandelson files contained neither a smoking gun nor bombshell revelation”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. Details about Peter Mandelson’s severance payment after being sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, and the “rushed” vetting process for his appointment have made the headlines, but the number of documents withheld, redacted or yet to be released mean the picture remains incomplete.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer “must release all the Mandelson files”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. It appears some of the files “may not see the light of day for years” due to ongoing police investigations. The police are “entitled to do their job and proceed with their investigation without undue interference”, but “questions about the prime minister’s judgment on this matter are not going away. The public deserve to know just how credulous Sir Keir really was.”

The comment in the files by Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Tony Blair’s chief of staff, that the appointment of Mandelson was “weirdly rushed”, is a “quietly damning analysis that will haunt Starmer forever”, said Rea. And the decision to give Mandelson a “£75,000 payoff” after his dismissal, when his contract, also included in the release, showed that “he was owed precisely £0”, raises questions, too.

But there is undoubtedly a “missing piece of the puzzle”, such as the correspondence between the former No. 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Mandelson. Reportedly, McSweeney asked Mandelson “three questions”, which Mandelson claimed he answered truthfully, a comment the government disputes.

It was clear from the files we have seen so far that due process was not followed in the vetting of Mandelson for the US ambassador role, said The Times in an editorial. The documents show Mandelson was “offered classified briefings” by government officials before he was granted appropriate security clearance: “it is hard to imagine this being granted to other ambassadorial appointments”. The government refuted allegations that the vetting process was “fast-tracked”, yet now it is claiming this was allowed “because Mandelson was a privy councillor, which does suggest due process was not followed”.

The files released in this first tranche “failed to include any interventions, comments or guidance from Starmer himself”, said Anna Gross in the Financial Times. “The prime minister emerges from this admittedly partial picture less as the main character in his own drama than as an oddly disembodied presence,” said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. We are left to wonder whether Mandelson’s appointment was the result of the PM’s readiness to “delegate” high-level decisions to McSweeney, or belief that the risk of having “his own personal Machiavelli” close to Donald Trump “was worth it”. Either way, as he was forced to admit this week, it was “his mistake”.

What next?

It will be several weeks at least before more documents are released, as they must first be examined by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Senior government figures told The Guardian that Starmer “could suffer further resignations when ministerial WhatsApp messages are published in the next tranche”.

These files will include informal messages between Mandelson and government figures “for six months before his appointment, and during his time as ambassador”. These “could prove a powder keg for already inflamed tensions between Washington and London”, said Rigby. Only documents that pose “significant security concerns” will be withheld.

Do the Freemasons have too much sway in the police force? What does the growing popularity of prediction markets mean for the future? Why are UK film and TV workers struggling?

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

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A new National Police Service dubbed the “British FBI” will be tasked with tackling the most serious crimes, enabling strained local forces to concentrate more resources on everyday offences, the Home Office has announced.

The announcement comes ahead of a series of reforms that will be “the biggest shake-up to the crime-fighting structure” in more than half a century, according to The Telegraph.

How will the new unit work?

The National Police Service will target terrorism, fraud and organised crime. Despite the “British FBI” nickname, the NPS will only operate in England and Wales, as policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The new organisation, set out in a government White Paper, will bring together the responsibilities of existing agencies such as the National Crime Agency, Counter Terrorism Policing, Regional Organised Crime Units and National Road Policing. The NPS will also be in charge of setting professional standards and training requirements and purchasing new equipment for all forces. This includes overseeing the nationwide roll-out of controversial facial recognition software.

The NPS will have its own uniform and a new national police commissioner will be appointed to lead the force, serving as the most senior police officer in the country.

The establishment of the new body will be accompanied by a reduction in the number of police forces in England and Wales, “with some merged to create bigger regional constabularies tackling complex crimes, such as murder, drugs and county lines gangs”.

What is the goal?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has insisted the radical overhaul is urgently needed because the “outdated” and “fragmented” current model is “buckling under the strain” of tackling complex modern crime, leaving “serious offending unpunished”.

“The current policing model was built for a different century,” she said. The “British FBI” will deploy “world-class talent and state-of-the-art technology to track down and catch dangerous criminals”. Ministers claim the NPS will be better placed to tackle criminals whose activities increasingly cross local constabulary and national borders.

Another of the “main aims” of the new service is to “boost the 43 local forces’ ability to spend more time fighting crime in their communities, such as shoplifting, drug dealing, phone theft and anti-social behaviour”, said Sky News.

How have the plans been received?

The establishment of the NPS “reflects a widespread consensus” among law enforcement experts that “more specialised officers are needed to combat threats such as online fraud and international organised crime, and that only larger forces can support the level of expertise required”, said the Financial Times.

The heads of Counter Terrorism Policing, the Metropolitan Police, the College of Policing, the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have all welcomed the move, writing jointly in The Telegraph that the current system is “messy and complex, and neither as efficient nor as coherent as it should be. That is why reform is needed – not as an ideological exercise, but as common sense. National crime demands a national response.”

While the policing world is “almost giddy” about the plans, “amending police structures, processes and institutions won’t affect people’s lives in the short, or even the medium, term”, said crime expert and former BBC journalist Danny Shaw. The White Paper “is not intended as an urgent plan of action to address our immediate concerns about safety on the streets, crime and anti-social behaviour”, but rather “a roadmap towards a more efficient and effective police service in the decades to come”.

Mark Jenner, a former undercover Metropolitan Police officer known as Mark Cassidy, has begun giving testimony to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. His appearance follows evidence already given by his ex-wife, the woman he deceived into having a relationship, and the whistleblower Peter Francis.

Jenner is one of 139 undercover police officers being investigated by the inquiry over their infiltration of thousands of predominantly left-wing groups from 1968 until at least 2010.

What is the inquiry investigating?

The inquiry was commissioned in 2014 by the then home secretary, Theresa May, to look into allegations of serious “historical failings” in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), with whom Jenner was associated, and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Both units have since been disbanded.

One of the most high-profile “spy cop” cases was that of Mark Kennedy, who had spent seven years undercover. During that time he had sexual and romantic relationships with “at least 11 women” who knew him as a fellow activist named Mark Stone, said The Guardian.

To date, it has been confirmed that “at least 25” of the 139 undercover officers being investigated by the inquiry “formed intimate relationships” with women. Four are alleged to have fathered children with women “who were unaware of their true identities”.

The inquiry is on course to become the most expensive in British legal history, according to documents seen by The Telegraph. The cost is set to pass £200 million before its conclusion, meaning it would overtake the £191 million set by the Bloody Sunday inquiry, published in 2010, and around five times more than the investigation into the 2017 Manchester Arena terror attack.

What did Jenner tell the court?

Yesterday, Jenner told the inquiry that he thought it had been necessary to have sex with women while operating undercover, but said sexual gratification was “definitely not” a perk of the job.

One of these women, Alison, whose real name has been withheld, was in a relationship with Jenner between 1995 and 2000. She believed him to be a fellow left-wing activist called Mark Cassidy. Jenner would spend the day with his then wife, then return to Alison in the evening, with each of them believing he was at work. The court had previously heard that requests made by Jenner for travel outside London to pursue the target group’s activities were actually holidays abroad with Alison.

He told the court his motivation for forming a romantic relationship with Alison was that she had “a landline telephone and knew a lot of people in Hackney, so her home made an ideal base for him to continue his undercover operation”. In response, she said that the claim was “complete nonsense” and “ridiculous”, as “everybody had a landline phone in 1995”.

After hearing Jenner’s first day of evidence, Alison said that “any illusions, or romantic memories of him being an anti-fascist, anti-racist, trade union activist” were “demolished”. Asked about the systemic extent of the “layers of lies”, Alison said: “I think his direct managers knew and covered it up. Or they didn’t know and they are entirely incompetent.” She told the inquiry that she believes there could be 50 or so women with similar experiences of undercover deceit.

Who else has testified?

Jenner’s ex-wife and mother of his children, identified only as S, said that her ex-husband and his fellow spy cops “prioritised personal gratification and their careers over the wellbeing of their families”, and claimed that the “deceit” and “collusion” of the cover up went “high up the chain”.

Earlier this month, whistleblower Peter Francis, who in 2013 revealed himself as a member of the SDS involved in the surveillance of the family of Stephen Lawrence, told the inquiry that it was “standard practice” to gather names of dead children from graveyards to create cover identities for missions.

His evidence revealed “serious wrongdoing” within the SDS, including the “targeting of black justice campaigns”, and officers were advised that “any crime up to actual bodily harm was acceptable”, said The Times.

What next?

Jon Savell, deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged “the serious wrongdoing” and the “totally unacceptable behaviour” by some undercover officers, said the BBC. Managerial failings had caused “significant harm and distress” to the “women who were deceived into sexual relationships”.

Jenner, given the codename “Touchy Subject” by police, will be questioned by the inquiry for the next two days. Key questions are expected to centre around the “extent to which his superiors knew about, and approved, his long-term relationship with Alison”, said The Guardian.

“To government ministers and police chiefs, it is the biggest investigative breakthrough since DNA screening,” said Mario Ledwith in The Times. “To privacy campaigners, it is ‘turning the country into an open prison’.”

Live facial recognition is already used by eight police forces, who used the technology to scan tens of thousands of faces a day with “ruthless efficiency”, looking for matches to a police hit list of offenders and suspects. Now the Government is looking into expanding its scope.

‘Orwellian’

Under the plans, all 43 police forces in England and Wales would have access to facial recognition. The Home Office would also develop a national face-matching system based not just on images of all offenders in custody, but potentially the passport and driving licence photos of everyone in the UK.

This database could be used to analyse footage of suspects from CCTV, doorbells, dashboard cameras and the like. If that sounds “Orwellian”, it’s because it is, said the Daily Mail. Using facial recognition to keep people safe at large events is proportionate. Having our faces tracked in every town, city and village is truly dystopian.

There would need to be strong safeguards, said The Times. In Luton, for example, faces captured by live recognition that don’t result in a match are immediately deleted. Used responsibly in this way, the technology has clear benefits for police, helping them keep up with “increasingly adept” modern criminals. Over the past two years, the Met has used facial recognition to find more than 100 sex offenders who’d broken their bail conditions – freeing up officers “for the actual job of policing”.

‘Nothing online is ever secure’

It’s true, said Fraser Sampson in The Daily Telegraph: facial recognition really is the biggest policing breakthrough since DNA matching, but there’s one key difference between them. The retention and use of DNA by the police is “very carefully controlled under several acts of Parliament with clear rules, reporting obligations and layers of independent oversight”. The same isn’t true of facial recognition. In fact, right now, the forensic comparison of suspects’ bootprints is better regulated than the use of their faces. That needs to change, and mandatory accountability processes need to be put in place before any wider rollout.

That’s without even considering the risk of hacking, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. As the recent experiences of M&S and Jaguar have taught us, “nothing online is ever secure”. Mark my words, if the state develops a database of every human face in the UK, it’s only a matter of time before that precious data “ends up in the wrong hands”.

Metropolitan Police officers may have to tell their bosses if they are members of a Masonic lodge after the force launched a consultation on whether the Freemasons should be added to its “declarable associations” policy.

The consultation is in response to questions over whether membership of the secretive fraternal organisation could impact “investigations, promotions and misconduct”, Scotland Yard said.

There are around six million Freemasons globally, with 200,000 in England and Wales. Almost all of them are men, although there are two all-female orders.

What did the commentators say?

The decision to launch a consultation follows a report into the unsolved 1987 murder of private detective Daniel Morgan. It “concluded that police officers’ membership of the Freemasons had been ‘a source of recurring suspicion and mistrust in the investigations’”, said The Telegraph.

The “idea” that the group is “pulling the strings behind the scenes” is “based on a misunderstanding” about Masonic orders, said Adrian Marsh, grand secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England. Comparing the stigma around Freemasonry to that of discussing one’s sexuality, Marsh said that “forcing people to declare” they are Freemasons could “breach their human rights”.

For “absolutely ages it was a given that half the coppers in London belonged to the Masons and ditto half the movers in the City”, said Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator. Even now, transparency is sensible to determine if, for instance, a promotion “could be affected by a superior officer being in the same lodge as the subordinate”. But if police were forced to admit participating in the “spectacle of men hopping around blindfold with aprons and rolled-up trousers”, the whole thing “becomes unthreatening” and “humdrum”. That “may be a price worth paying”.

But Freemasonry is undergoing something of a revival. This “coterie of older men” is trying to “attract fresh blood” and “ensure the survival of ‘the craft’” by reducing the minimum age from 21 to 18 and embracing social media, said The Sunday Times. It seems to be working: “tech-obsessed, socially liberal young people” are “clamouring to join an ancient, all-male society”.

In London, “lonely young men” are “lining up” to become Freemasons, said The Londoner. “After decades of secrecy”, London’s Freemasons are “opening up” and using their official TikTok account to “dispel myths” and promote themselves “to a younger audience”. The new recruits are diverse “ethnically and socially”: this 350-year-old boys’ club, which “claims to descend from the guilds of medieval stonemasons”, seems to be “resonating with young Londoners in 2025”.

What next?

Senior police officers will discuss the proposed policy change with the United Grand Lodge of England, the headquarters of Freemasonry. A spokesperson for the group said it is “looking forward” to the conversation.

The Met said that as well as Freemasons, it would also be looking into “other organisations that could call impartiality into question or give rise to conflict of loyalties”, said Sky News.

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police, just days before he is due to be released from a German prison.

Christian Brückner, 49, who denies any involvement in the case, remains the focus of investigations by British, German and Portuguese police nearly two decades on from the three-year-old’s kidnapping, which attracted global attention.

Who is he?

A “drifter and a petty criminal”, Brückner was just a teenager when, in 1994, he was first convicted of sexual abuse of a child, said The i Paper. A year later he fled to Portugal to escape custody before returning to Germany in 1999 to finish his sentence.

He returned intermittently to Portugal after his release in 2000 and is currently serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005, two years before McCann disappeared from the same Algarve town.

In October last year, Brückner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

Why is he a suspect?

In 2020, Brückner was named as an official suspect in the McCann case by the German authorities.

The three-year-old disappeared from the Praia da Luz resort in 2007, sparking one of the most high-profile missing persons investigations of recent decades. The Met’s investigation, named Operation Grange, has cost more than £13 million.

Brückner has always denied any involvement in the case and has never been charged, despite evidence he was in the area at the time.

German, Portuguese and British police have carried out a number of searches over the years, most recently in June when officers scoured 120 acres of scrubland east of Praia da Luz where Brückner was known to have spent time. Despite repeated efforts, authorities have found no trace of McCann or evidence directly tying her disappearance to Brückner. But they remain convinced he was involved, a claim backed up by a “former associate”, who told ITV News this week that he was "100% sure" Brückner had a hand in the kidnapping.

He “is not just our number one suspect, he’s the only suspect”, Hans Christian Wolters, the lead German prosecutor investigating the disappearance, told the BBC last month. Wolters claimed there is evidence that indicates Brückner is “responsible” for the toddler’s disappearance and death, but that it is “not strong enough to make a guilty verdict likely” so he hasn’t been arrested or charged.

What happened with the Met?

With Brückner due to be released on Wednesday, the Met Police had requested an interview that “for legal reasons” could only be done via an international letter of request, which he subsequently refused.

DCI Mark Cranwell, the senior investigating officer for Operation Grange, confirmed the German “remains a suspect in the Metropolitan Police’s own investigation” but “in the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry”.

German law enforcement authorities have already voiced concern that Brückner will soon leave prison and could flee the country, with Wolters saying the expectation was that he would “commit further crimes”.

Around 78,000 people reported having their phones or bags snatched across England and Wales in the year to March 2024, according to government statistics. That's a 153% increase from the previous year.

In London, dubbed the 'phone-snatching capital of Europe', the experience will be "depressingly familiar" to many in the city, said The Times. According to a recent investigation by The Independent, an average of 180 phones is stolen in the capital every day. So why are phone thefts so common and what can you do if your phone is stolen?

What's behind the rise in crime?

The last comparable increase in "snatch theft" was in 2002, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Tony Blair and his then home secretary David Blunkett made tackling rising street crime a priority, but what really quelled the epidemic was phone companies "designing it out" by introducing more sophisticated security so that handsets became useless if stolen. "For the best part of two decades, phone thefts ceased to be a significant problem," but now thieves have found ways around the security.

Once stolen, phones are quickly taken out of the country – they have been found as far away as northern Africa, Dubai and Shenzhen in southern China, where they can be re-sold on the black market. They are also valuable for their parts – thieves can expect to get a couple of hundred pounds just for a screen from a new iPhone, said The Guardian.

What's more, the rise in the use of illegal e-bikes is making it much harder for police to catch thieves. "E-bikes are capable of doing 50, 60, 70mph sometimes on something the same size as a mountain bike," Inspector Dan Green told The Independent. "They are really agile and we can't get anywhere near some of them."

What's being done about it?

The Met Police says it is cracking down on the "£50m-a-year trade in stolen phones". Earlier this month it reported it had seized 1,000 stolen mobiles and arrested 230 people in one week. More teams of plain-clothed officers have been deployed.

The government is also toughening its response. Among the 35 measures proposed in Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's new Crime and Policing Bill, is one that would give police the power to search a property for a stolen phone without a warrant. Officers would be able to act in a "golden hour" to search a location where stolen items have been electronically traced via a victim's phone-tracking app or Bluetooth. Cooper said victims currently felt "extreme frustration" when tracking technology appears to show them where their stolen phone is, only to be told by police that nothing can be done.

What can I do to prevent my phone from being stolen?

The Met advises people to use their phones for the shortest time possible on streets and to avoid texting while walking. It also urges people to look out for e-bikes and mopeds and to stay away from the roadside.

Use all the security measures that make it harder for thieves to access information from your phone – such as biometrics, like fingerprints or facial recognition. Make sure you know your International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) – the unique 15-digit number used to identify your phone. (Type *#06# into your keypad, or go into the settings app.) You can use this number to blacklist the phone if it is stolen.

You should also check that your cloud storage and messaging apps like WhatsApp are backed up daily, so you can retrieve photos or other personal information in the event of a theft.

What should I do if it's already been stolen?

Once the phone has been stolen, you should immediately call your network provider and tell them, ask them to block the number and blacklist the IMEI number. Ask for a new SIM card to be sent to your address.

You can also log onto Find My iPhone (for iPhone), Find My Device (for Android) or visit findmymobile.samsung.com (for Samsung) to mark the device as stolen and erase it. Register the phone as stolen on the police website or call 101, as you'll need a crime number to file an insurance claim. Let your bank know so that they can suspend your banking apps, and change the passwords to your accounts and apps.

It's been almost two years since the Metropolitan Police was severely criticised by the Casey Review for "over-policing and under-protecting" Black Londoners, said the BBC. Now, the force has come up with a new charter which aims to strengthen and improve the use of its controversial stop and search powers.

More than 8,500 Londoners of all ages and ethnicities were involved in the new charter, which was put together over the past 18 months. Surveys and events were held in each of the capital's 32 boroughs, and around 80 young people were invited to New Scotland Yard to work on the new proposals.

What is stop and search?

Stop and search has been used as a policing tool since the Vagrancy Act of 1824, but has attracted criticism more recently for being ineffective and for disproportionately targeting Black people and those from an ethnic minority background. It allows officers to detain a person without arresting them if they believe they have reasonable grounds to suspect that an unlawful item, such as weapons, drugs or stolen goods, is being carried.

There is another category of stop and search, often referred to as a section 60, which requires police officers to only "reasonably believe" that a serious crime "may" be carried out.

Does it work?

The Met has defended stop and search, arguing that it saves lives. In the last four years, 17,500 weapons were seized as a result, with 3,500 in 2024 alone. According to the force, up to 68% of Londoners, including young people, support its use, while the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has described it as a "vital policing tool".

However, when implemented badly, it has the potential to "burn through trust with those we are here to protect", said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, who leads the new project, in London's The Standard.

Davarel Gordon told the BBC he was around 12 when he was first stopped by police. "The first time it happens you're in shock," he said. "There wasn't any communication, I didn't understand what was going on."

Stop and search has been described as a "rite of passage" for Black boys in the capital, according to Sky News. Last year a police watchdog said two officers committed misconduct when they handcuffed and restrained a 14-year-old Black schoolboy in a case of mistaken identity during a stop and search in Croydon.

In December 2020, a 15-year-old Black schoolgirl, known as Child Q, was wrongly accused of having drugs, and was strip-searched while on her period by female officers, without an appropriate adult present. Three officers will face gross misconduct proceedings later this year.

What's the current situation in the capital?

In London 53% of fatal stab victims and 45% of offenders in 2023 were Black. Black people represent 13.5% of the city's population. Black men aged 18 to 20 made up the majority of those caught with knives.

Yet such is the controversy surrounding stop and search that some officers are hesitant to use it for fear that inadvertent misuse could be career-ending. Despite an increase in knife crime in the capital, the number of stop and searches in London fell 17% to 120,783 in the year to January 2025, according to The Times. Black people accounted for 40% of those searched.

What does the charter say?

The charter includes new commitments around the communication and tone that police use during stop and search, and improved training for officers, so that they can better understand and serve their communities. There will be a more robust supervision process, with more regular and random reviews of how the new system is working, and better handling of complaints, which will involve local communities to avoid internal bias.

Feedback from the public found that the police need to be "less aggressive" and that the tactic needed to be more targeted and tailored to avoid "embarrassment and trauma", which the Met says it has taken on board.

What's the reaction?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan has said that the scope of the new charter involving the participation of so many Londoners means that lives will be saved. "We went wherever people would talk to us, and we went to knock on doors that we knew people didn't really want to speak to us in some organisations, and we consulted with those people," he told the BBC.

There is tentative optimism that the new charter will have the desired results. Gordon told the BBC that despite his experience, he still supports stop and search and hopes that the new charter will mean improved aftercare and empathy for those wrongly implicated. "There's not enough of that. They need to remember we are people. Just make sure the person is OK."

"Shoot to Kill: Terror on the Tube" is a "mesmerising feat of documentary-making", said Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian.

For the first time since the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005, the Metropolitan Police officer who killed him gives a "raw and detailed interview" about the events that led to the Brazilian electrician's death.

De Menezes was on his way to repair a broken fire alarm when he was shot and killed in an underground carriage at Stockwell station. In a tragic case of mistaken identity, police wrongly suspected De Menezes as being one of the suicide bombers who took part in a failed copycat attack two weeks after the 7/7 London bombings.

The first instalment of the "gripping" two-part series is "all atmosphere", said Nicholson, capturing the "palpable nervousness and anxiety" of Londoners in the aftermath of the attack. Commuters were already "frightened and jittery" when, just two weeks after the bombings that killed 52 people on 7/7, another four bombers attempted to detonate explosives on the underground, failing to go through with it only because their devices didn't go off.

The Metropolitan Police officer's "minute-by-minute" first-hand account of the events that led to the tragic mistake is "riveting", said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. From the "grainy, faxed image of the real suspect" to the surveillance officers who identified De Menezes as a potential bomber, we gradually find out how it went so wrong.

Despite the then Met commissioner Cressida Dick's instruction to stop De Menezes getting on the Tube being "woefully unclear", the police officer avoids criticising the higher powers at the Met. And he stops short of offering an apology to the innocent man's family. "Ultimately our sympathy should be for Mr de Menezes, killed on what should have been an ordinary journey to work."

Perhaps the series was a little rushed in its examination of the serious errors made by the Met Police, said Nicholson in The Guardian. But it "untangles the mess made" in the aftermath of the shooting, allowing those who were there that day to "give their version of events". It's a "compelling" watch.

Keir Starmer has announced a review into how fatal police shootings are investigated after a police officer was cleared of murdering an unarmed man during a police stop in south London two years ago.

Sergeant Martyn Blake, 40, shot Chris Kaba, 24, in the head during a "hard stop" in Streatham Hill in September 2022. Kaba was driving an Audi Q8 "linked to a non-fatal shooting in Brixton the previous night", said The Times. Blake denied intending to kill Kaba, who was not carrying a firearm, and told the trial he believed that one of his colleagues could be killed by Kaba's car as he tried to flee.

Reacting to the verdict, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said no police officer was above the law but expressed concern over "the lack of support officers face for doing their best".

How many UK police officers carry firearms?

In Britain, firearms are issued only to specially trained personnel within the police, known as Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs). The rules are different in Northern Ireland, where all police officers are authorised to carry firearms.

In England and Wales, only about 4% of police are armed, amounting to 6,473 officers as of 31 March 2024.

According to the Metropolitan Police, an authorised firearms officer's duties typically include: responding to high-risk incidents and assisting in proactive policing operations where firearms support may be required, as well as providing "public reassurance" at events.

How common are police shootings in the UK?

Fatal police shootings are rare. In 2022/23, three people were fatally shot by police in England and Wales. Since 1990, police in England and Wales have shot and killed 83 people, according to Inquest, an independent organisation that monitors and records fatal police shootings.

When are police allowed to open fire? 

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, officers have the right to use "reasonable force" when necessary. More generally, police officers share the right to self-defence or the protection of others upheld by common law and Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

More specifically, the Police Conduct Regulations 2020 for England and Wales state that officers should only discharge firearms to "prevent a real and immediate threat to life". The guidance is to aim for a target's torso, when possible, but if it is "imperative the subject is immediately incapacitated", officers are allowed to aim for the person's head. In all circumstances, officers must not use excessive violence and must ensure medical aid is provided as soon as possible.

Police shootings are investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, an independent watchdog. But officers can also face prosecution in the courtroom.

How are police shootings handled in court?

Under English law, police "theoretically have no greater protections than the ordinary subject when using force," said The Guardian; it must be proportionate, reasonable, and based on an honestly held belief of necessity. But the "received wisdom" is that juries are often "reluctant to convict cops 'standing up' for themselves".

No police officer in England and Wales has ever been convicted of murder after a shooting, although there have been a small number of criminal prosecutions.

Police officers can also be prosecuted under civil law. However, many officers want the burden of proof to be the criminal test: what the officer honestly believed as chose to act, rather than the lower burden of proof used in civil court, said BBC legal correspondent Dominic Casciani. Police chiefs argue that using the criminal burden of proof only would "end confusion".

Scotland Yard and its beleaguered commissioner are under renewed scrutiny over their handling of Gaza protests in London.

"Britain's streets have become another frontier in the war between Israel and Hamas," said The Times's crime editor Ben Ellery, "and often the police are being caught in the crossfire." A "series of flashpoints" involving supporters of Israel and Palestinians has "plunged" police forces "into complex scenarios and at times drawn criticism for its handling of them".

The latest controversy is over an exchange between a Metropolitan Police officer and Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, during a pro-Palestinian protest in central London on 13 April.

'Fear and favouritism'

In a now-viral video clip, the officer told Falter that he was "quite openly Jewish" and that "I'm worried about the reaction to your presence" at the pro-Palestinian march. The officer offered to escort him away from the area and said that if Falter remained, he would be arrested for causing "a breach of peace".

The force subsequently apologised, before issuing another apology for having said in the initial statement that Falter's presence could be deemed "provocative".

The Met's actions, wrote Falter in The Sunday Times, suggested "it's not just that central London is a 'no-go zone' for Jews, as has been said previously, but a police-enforced Jew-free zone". The incident was an "inevitable outcome" of a policing approach that "sacrifices the rights of law-abiding Londoners to appease lawless mobs".

Falter called for the head of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, to stand down, a demand supported by the former home secretary Suella Braverman. "I've seen too much fear and even more favouritism in the policing of pro-Palestinian protests," she wrote in The Telegraph.

A 13-minute clip newly revealed by Sky News "gives context to the lengthy and fraught exchanges", said the broadcaster. In the footage, the officer disputes Falter's claim that he was just trying to cross the road. The officer claims  Falter had "deliberately" walked "against the flow of people" and offers to escort him on a route of "no resistance".

"Watching the video in its entirety (not just the inflammatory words picked out for headlines), I do feel some sympathy for the policeman, whose tone and demeanour do not look intended to be hostile," said Anne McElvoy on the i news site. 

"Seeking to protect a smaller group of people from a larger one and insisting that he did not want 'anyone to antagonise anyone' has a good grain of common sense to it." That said, it is a "worrying and oppressive situation if a small group of Jewish people cannot cross paths with a Gaza march without being told they are in the wrong just for being there".

'Careful choice of words'

The Met's latest "clumsy intervention" has "shone an unhappy light on police tactics at demonstrations" in general, said McElvoy.

Since Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel, a pro-Palestinian protest has been held, on average, every two weeks in London. It has been the "biggest continuing drain on police resources since before the 2012 Olympic Games, costing tens of millions of pounds", said Ellery in The Times.

But rather than ban the protests, "the Met has sought to place conditions on them and attempt to police them to the letter of the law". This has led to "accusations of not taking a strong enough stance on antisemitism".

In The Telegraph, Braverman reiterated her concern about the "perception of two-tier policing". Marchers who are "engaged in weekly carnivals of hate" are "treated with kid gloves", while Jewish people are forced out of the capital and "told to keep their heads down", she wrote.

A lot of the ongoing issues around policing protests "arises from a lack of certainty from the Met about communicating what conduct at demonstrations is within the bounds of the law and where it intends to intervene or not", said McElvoy. One answer would be to remind officers to be "more careful in choice of words" and to learn "lessons about language and approach".

A year after an independent review labelled it institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, the Metropolitan Police's attempts to reform itself remain under scrutiny.

The Met recently announced it has scrapped its controversial violent gangs database, following claims that it disproportionately targeted Black Londoners. The gangs violence matrix (GVM), launched in 2012 in the wake of the London riots the year before, has "repeatedly" been described by the Met as a "crucial tool to prevent gang violence", said the BBC. At its peak in 2017, there were nearly 4,000 names on the list. 

However, some were reportedly added "simply because of where they lived or who they knew", said the Daily Mail. There were concerns that those on the list could wrongly face "harsher enforcement actions", while the matrix had been shown to lead to "breaches of data protection laws" and a failure to "distinguish between criminals and victims when adding names". 

The GVM will be replaced by an existing but "adapted" violence harm assessment (VHA) to identify the capital's most violent people, the force said. But serious concerns remain about police prejudice towards ethnic minorities. This month, the head of the National Police Chiefs' Council Gavin Stephens became the most senior serving officer in the country to say that policing in the UK is "institutionally racist". 

What has happened since the Casey report?

In 1999, an inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence led Sir William Macpherson to conclude that the Met was institutionally racist. Then last year, Baroness Louise Casey's landmark report, commissioned by the Met after the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, concluded that the force was guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia. The report warned that "public consent is broken".

A year later, the Met remains in a "race crisis", said The Guardian's police and crime correspondent, Vikram Dodd. This month, Black and Asian officers called on ethnic minority recruits to "boycott the force" after the chair of the Met Black Police Association (Met BPA), Inspector Charles Ehikioya, was placed under investigation. His supporters say the gross misconduct charges against him are "trumped up". 

Ehikioya allegedly received an inappropriate message from a colleague and did not report it, which he denies. Ehikioya claims he is being targeted because he has "challenged racism and discrimination within" the force, said the i news site. 

The National Black Police Association (NBPA) has since sent a "rallying cry" to ethnic minorities "not to join the Met" in the first boycott in 20 years, wrote assistant editor Darren Lewis in the Mirror. It is clear "we still do need a diverse police force", but it is "so hard to argue the case for joining the police" given the evidence of "the culture that many Black people have warned of for years".

The president of the NBPA, Andy George, told The Voice that Met Commissioner Mark Rowley had "refused to discuss his concerns". "There has been a desire to silence dissenting voices including an attempt to weaken the Met BPA," George said.

Rowley has previously come "under fire" for refusing to "describe racism within the force as institutional". He has shown "reluctance to take key steps in addressing the issue", wrote Richard Sudan in The Voice.

What will it do next?

The Met is trying "to get its house in order", wrote crime editor Ben Ellery in The Times, as it continues to reel from a long "series of scandals". But it is also hamstrung by the lack of "powers of dismissal" for chief constables as well as a "chronic shortage" of new recruits and funding.

Baroness Casey said in her report that the force's efforts were "not good enough", though admitted more time was needed for sweeping changes. But Gavin Stephens told The Guardian that "little progress" had been made since. Stephens acknowledged that there was a need for a "fundamental redesign of national policies and practices", and that "black people should no longer experience disproportionate use of force". 

Other changes include an ongoing "recruitment drive" for Black, Asian and minority ethnic officers to better reflect London's diversity, said The Independent's race correspondent Nadine White. However, at the current rate of progress it would take nearly 50 years to achieve this, according to figures analysed by Byline Times last year. 

Ultimately, if the Met is "genuine in its desire to move forward and build trust with Black Londoners", said George, then it needs to "adequately resource" organisations like the Met BPA, rather than target them.

The news that two male bodies were recovered from the River Thames while the search for chemical attack suspect Abdul Ezedi was under way could easily have been overlooked.

Neither body was Ezedi's. He was last seen "leaning over the railings" on London's Chelsea Bridge on the night of the attack in Clapham in January, according to Metropolitan Police. The force said its main working hypothesis was that Ezedi had "gone into" the river. The two bodies found are being treated as unexpected deaths, pending inquiries, but the discovery highlights the "gruesome" reality of the river, said The Guardian's Caroline Davies. 

On average, 25 bodies have been retrieved from the 47-mile urban stretch of the Thames each year since 2012, according to Metropolitan police figures, most found washed up on mudflats or spotted floating in the water. But along the full 213-mile course of the river, "a dead body is washed up once a week on average", wrote Davies. "Few make the headlines."

What is the main cause of death?

"If you spend enough time on the Thames, you will eventually come across human remains," wrote river mudlark Lara Maiklem in The Spectator. It is "a river of lost souls, filled with suicides, battles, burials, murders and accidents".

The number of corpses that wash up every year is "positively Dickensian", wrote William Boyd in the Financial Times, referring to Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" (1865), which begins with a body being hauled from the Thames one night. But most of the deaths are accidental: people caught by the rising tide or by the force of the current.

The initial shock of cold water is often the cause of drowning, said Davies. "The muscles freeze, the mouth opens, they take in the water and they sink to the bottom. Only with decomposition will they begin to float."

Even in summer, people start to suffer from the effects of cold water shock within three minutes, according to Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) figures reported in Metro. Last year, at least 109 people went into the water and survived, according to Port of London Authority (PLA) data, while 27 died. 

Neil Withers, RNLI Area Lifesaving Manager for the Thames, said swimmers could be swept hundreds of metres away just "seconds" after entering the river.

Very few of the bodies are homicide victims. The tides mean the bodies could "pop up" unexpectedly, said Davies. But "with advances in DNA and better reporting of missing persons, almost all are identified".

How are the bodies found and recovered?

The Met's Marine Policing Unit (MPU) is responsible for retrieving the bodies found along the urban stretch of the Thames, between Dartford and Hampton Court, as well as the lakes, reservoirs and 200 miles of canal in Greater London. 

But the enormously strong tide makes retrieval difficult. "If someone jumps at Westminster Bridge, depending on weather, within 10 seconds they could be 100 metres up or downriver," said Davies.

The MPU's team of 10 divers can therefore only go into the Thames in certain circumstances. The river is also extremely dark and deep: up to 20 metres in places. Even if police are aware of where and when someone went into the water, the MPU must typically "wait for the body to pop up" after decomposing, or carry out a "low water search" for three days, sometimes finding bodies on the mudflats. 

Some corpses are found after becoming tangled in old piers; others are caught in "rubbish catchers, which are like big bins with mesh to catch river rubbish".

Despite popular folklore suggesting more likely places for bodies to wash up, such as Dead Man's Hole at Tower Bridge, there are no predictable locations, said BNN Breaking. "The river's strong tide and dangerous environment make it a formidable adversary, often leaving bodies severely mutilated and difficult to recover."

However, those washed down river "tend to pool at the great U-bend of the Isle of Dogs", said Boyd.

"At this time of year, the Thames is very fast flowing, very wide and full of lots of snags," said Jon Savell, the Met commander in charge of the Ezedi inquiry. 

"It is quite likely that if he has gone in the water, he won't appear for maybe up to a month and it's not beyond possibility that he may never actually surface."

The junior doctors' strike is becoming Labour's problem – and it has no easy answers

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian

Recent industrial action has revealed a "wider malaise" among young professionals, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, "something the next government will inherit". The opposition party could previously "get away with" calling for ministers to "get back round the table", but is now "deep into the era" where "power shifts decisively away from a government". And "all anyone wants to know is what the next lot would do instead".

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Sunak plays it safe with election announcement

Isabel Hardman in The Spectator

The prime minister "is – not unusually – playing it safe by saying his 'working assumption' is that the election will be in the second half of this year", rather than the predicted spring date, writes Isabel Hardman for The Spectator. Rishi Sunak "knows from watching what happened to Gordon Brown's Election That Never Was the dangers of ramping up speculation without following through", but "that doesn't mean he won't change course and go for the May election" after all. "But dampening the chatter about it is a sensible tactic." 

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Jews shouldn't let October 7 change us for the worse

Josh Kaplan in The Jewish Chronicle

The Jewish community's collective New Year's resolution should be to "be open-minded towards our critics", Josh Kaplan suggests in The Jewish Chronicle. "Not every single person who disagrees with the mainstream Jewish opinion on Israel wishes us all dead", and "there are good, normal people with critical views" of Israel. To assume otherwise "diminishes something in us and ensures that the debates around the Middle East will only get more poisonous and all-consuming".

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If you don't eat at restaurants weekly, you can't complain about their demise

Josh Barrie on the i news site

"Vast parts" of the UK's restaurant industry look "increasingly vulnerable", says Josh Barrie on the i news site, following "a number of high-profile closures" in the opening days of 202 . The rule that "if a business is good enough, it will succeed and survive unsavoury times" no longer seems to apply, in part because British diners are "often still far too suspicious, believing restaurants to be overpriced".

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Luke Littler was glorious in defeat, in a sport the snobs hate – what could be more British than that?

Zoe Williams in The Guardian

Most professional sports reward virtues such as athleticism, training and physical endurance, writes Zoe Williams in The Guardian. But darts is different. "The irony, self-mockery and playfulness of codifying a sport that requires skill but no exertion is probably as close to the embodiment of British values as many of us would be prepared to skate."

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The Met needs to focus on cracking down on crime in the capital rather than investigating Israel

The Telegraph editorial board

An appeal by the Metropolitan Police to travellers arriving at London airports for witnesses to report alleged war crimes committed in Gaza has "caused serious concern among British Jews and threatens a diplomatic rift with Israel", said The Telegraph in its leader. While the Met must abide by international war crime warrants, "it is questionable whether it should be actively soliciting information in this way".

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Nigel Farage terrifies the Tories, but the Lib Dems will win more seats

Paul Waugh on the i news site

"There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about Reform UK’s chances of political progress in 2024," writes Paul Waugh on the i news site. Nigel Farage "may be the only figure who could make Reform UK a real threat", but for him "the ultimate prize may be a Tory wipeout followed by a begging plea to rejoin them and help rescue them from opposition".

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The propaganda that damned Ukraine

Chas Freeman Jr. on UnHerd

The "propaganda machines" in the West have "worked overtime to ensure that we take passionate sides, believe what we want to believe, and condemn anyone who questions the narrative we have internalised" in Ukraine, writes retired US diplomat Chas Freeman Jr. on UnHerd. "The consequences for all have been dire."

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An Armistice Day pro-Palestine demonstration is expected to go ahead after the Metropolitan Police chief said there were no grounds for a ban.

Every Saturday since the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, pro-Palestinian protesters have demonstrated in London and around the UK "to voice their opposition to the devastating impact of Israel's response on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have died", said Archie Bland in The Guardian. 

Organisers have estimated that over half a million people have attended these rallies, while police have put the figure at 70,000. "But the most urgent disagreement has been over the nature of the demonstrations: whether they have been violent, intimidating, or driven by antisemitism." 

'Marches are peaceful'

With a "huge spike" in reported antisemitic incidents since the attacks, some British Jews "have said that they find the marches intimidating." But this is "not a monolithic view" with left-wing Jewish groups among those on the protests, said The Guardian's Bland. And many who have joined the marches "say they have been peaceful, with a clear focus on the demand for protection for ordinary Palestinians". 

Organisers of the march have also said that the timing of the protest is purely "coincidental", and have said "that a march calling for a ceasefire can hardly be said to run against the spirit of remembrance events". 

They have also pointed out that the march will begin two hours after the 11am two-minute silence on Saturday, with the most significant remembrance events occurring on Sunday.

'Invoke draconian powers'

Rishi Sunak, however, has said the protest should not go ahead on Armistice Day, dubbing the march "provocative and disrespectful". Home Secretary Suella Braverman, meanwhile, has branded the protests "hate marches". 

But Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley has said such protests can only be banned in extreme circumstances – and in any case, the police could not stop from people gathering, only from marching. 

"The laws created by Parliament are clear. There is no absolute power to ban protests, therefore there will be a protest this weekend," he said, adding: "The law provides no mechanism to ban a static gathering of people". 

Sunak has said the Metropolitan Police will be held "accountable" for the marches going ahead, reported The Times.

Rowley's refusal to ban the march makes the Metropolitan Police look "weak", said the Daily Mail. "By failing to clamp down on criminal activity during the marches, senior officers have encouraged Islamist extremists to flex their muscles," the paper continued. 

Now counter-demonstrations are being whipped up online by the EDL's "odious founder" Tommy Robinson. "The truth is, if the police had taken a much firmer line from the start against those preaching violence and racial hatred, this potentially explosive confrontation might have been averted," said the paper.

It will now be for ministers to decide "whether to invoke draconian powers to try to stop the protest from going ahead", said Politico, which would be "effectively by ruling that the police are failing to discharge their duties". And "needless to say", such a move would be "highly controversial".

The Army is preparing to offer counter-terrorism support in London after a growing number of police officers stood down from firearm duties following a murder charge against one of their colleagues.

An unnamed Metropolitan Police officer appeared in court on Thursday, charged with killing an unarmed Black man, 24-year-old Chris Kaba, in south London last September. 

Although the majority of the Met's 2,500 armed officers have so far continued work as usual, The Telegraph reported that "more than 300 officers" have said they will not carry a gun. 

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it had received a request from the Home Office to "provide routine counter-terrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed" – this is known as military aid to the civil authorities (MACA). This could include the deployment of SAS special forces in very specific circumstances. 

It comes amid a crackdown on rogue Met officers, with Scotland Yard admitting last week that the number of officers currently suspended or on restricted duties was more than 1,000 – equivalent to “the size of a small police force”.

What is behind the officer 'revolt'?

Chris Kaba was driving in south London on 5 September last year when the car, later found to be registered to a different name, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), was picked up by an automatic number plate recognition camera for having been linked to a recent firearms incident. Police officers pursued the vehicle, before a specialist firearms officer fired a single shot through the driver's side of the windscreen. Kaba died later that night in hospital.

The fatal shooting "sparked mass protests from the black community, including from British rapper Stormzy", said the Daily Mail, and led to the IOPC launching a murder investigation.

Last week, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issued a murder charge against a police officer identified only as Officer NX121. In response, more than 100 officers turned in the permits that allow them to carry weapons, a move described by Sky News as a "revolt". 

Home Secretary Suella Braverman was quick to defend officers who make "split-second decisions under extraordinary pressures". She posted on Twitter, now known as X, that "they mustn't fear ending up in the dock for carrying out their duties".

But The Guardian said the "scale and speed" of the "protest" by Met armed officers prompted her to order an emergency review of armed policing, with several sources telling the paper of "fears the rebellion could spread further within the Met and around the country".

One area of the force that has been "significantly hit" is the armed response vehicle units, which each include three firearms officers and patrol the capital 24 hours a day in case of a major incident, said The Telegraph. Sources told the paper the unit had been "severely depleted".

What has the reaction been?

Braverman's intervention was backed by Rishi Sunak, who argued that armed police needed greater clarity about their legal powers. 

The Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said it was an area "long overdue for reform". Firearms officers have become concerned about potentially lengthy legal proceedings simply for doing their job as they have been trained, he said.

The Met chief said that of the roughly 4,000 armed incidents a year, on average officers only open fire twice. He suggested legal changes over the way self-defence is interpreted in police misconduct cases, the introduction of a criminal standard of proof for unlawful killing in inquests and inquiries, and changes to the threshold at which the IOPC can launch an investigation.

The home secretary's comments have, however, also been met with "criticism from Labour MPs", reported The Independent, including Harriet Harman, former shadow attorney general Karl Turner and shadow business secretary John Denham, alongside human rights lawyers and a former chief prosecutor.

Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for northwest England from 2011 to 2015, accused Braverman of "intervening in an ongoing prosecution", claiming “there is no justification for doing so". 

"Strict legal laws apply to publishing statements which could prejudice a jury at a trial and subsequently be held to be contempt of court," said The Independent.

What would special forces be doing?

An MACA is only offered to the police or the NHS in "emergency situations", said BBC News, such as when the military helped medical staff during the Covid pandemic, and covered for striking border staff and paramedics last year.

The Met stressed that the MACA request was a "contingency option" that would only be used "in specific circumstances and where an appropriate policing response was not available".

The police spokesperson also insisted military staff would not be used "in a routine policing capacity" – meaning there is little chance of seeing armed soldiers patrolling London.

The number of Met officers currently suspended or on restricted duties amid a push to root out rogue officers is equivalent to “the size of a small police force”, Scotland Yard has admitted.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy told reporters that of the Met's workforce of about 34,000 officers, 201 were suspended and 860 were on restricted duties. "That’s 1 in every 34 officers," said ITV News's UK editor Paul Brand on Twitter, now known as X.

The London force said that 450 officers were under investigation for alleged sexual or domestic violence, and that 275 were already awaiting gross misconduct hearings. The former head of His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Zoe Billingham, told BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme that the newly revealed figures were "eye-watering". 

The crackdown follows the convictions of former officers David Carrick and Wayne Couzens, which triggered a "blistering review" by Baroness Casey earlier this year, said the BBC. 

The review found that women and children had been failed by what Casey has described as a "boy's club" culture rife at the Met, and by racism, misogyny and homophobia at the heart of the force. In the past year, 100 officers have been sacked for gross misconduct – "a 66% increase on historical averages", said The Guardian.

Since the conviction of serial rapist Carrick, 1,600 cases spanning the past ten years have been identified where officers faced allegations of domestic or sexual violence but no action was taken. 

Cundy has now outlined plans to hold about 30 misconduct hearings and 30 gross incompetence hearings each month. "This is going to take one, two or more years to root out those who are corrupt," he said.

The scale of the Met’s clean-up operation, said ITV's Brand on X, "underlines the crisis of trust in the force, especially for women, if it needed further emphasising". 

Andy Cooke, head of His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, warned earlier this year that “public trust in the police is hanging by a thread”.

The government is expected to announce today whether it will approve pay increases of 6-6.5% for public-sector workers.

Rishi Sunak has hinted that he might reject the official pay review body’s recommendation for teachers, junior doctors, police and other public-sector workers.

This would “prompt fresh tensions with unions”, said the BBC, “raising the prospect of continuing public-sector strikes”.

But signing off on a 6.5% pay rise would create another problem: where Sunak and his chancellor would find the cash to fund it.

What did the papers say?

Jeremy Hunt has “refused to cover any extra increases with more borrowing”, noted The Telegraph, as he believes that could “fuel” inflation. “Borrowing is itself inflationary”, said the chancellor this week.

Instead, he has ordered ministers to find between £2bn and £3bn of cuts to fund the pay rises. Hunt’s “edict” has “provoked a flurry in Whitehall to find savings”, said the Financial Times, with warnings from some ministers that the cuts would damage “already-stretched public services”.

A source told the paper that “the conversations are live” and the “bleeding stumps are out”, referring to the tendency of ministers to issue dire warnings of the consequences of cuts.

Without resorting to borrowing, offering pay increases of 6% or more would “eat into the budgets” of Whitehall departments, agreed the i news site.

But Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, told the site the choice doesn’t have to be between borrowing or cuts, and Sunak “could start by looking at the money made by profiteering companies that have been driving up inflation”.

“They want us to think that the choice is between the devil and the deep blue sea,” she added, but this is “simply not true”.

Unison magazine has accused the government of “distorting the truth”. The union’s policy officer, Guy Collis, said the government recorded a budget surplus of more than £5bn in January 2023, and government borrowing is currently £30bn less than forecast.

“So the money is there”, he wrote, “it just needs government to make health workers its priority”.

A former speechwriter for Tony Blair also believes the issue is simpler than presented by the government, arguing that Sunak “can sort the strikes if he just stops playing small-time politics” by trying to leverage strikes to dent the popularity of Labour.

Writing for the Evening Standard, Philip Collins warned that “soon there will be a parade of strikes and the feeling that no service in Britain is working”. The “initial union demands are too high, of course”, he wrote, “but this is a negotiation”.

What next?

Sunak and Hunt’s decision will come “against a backdrop of a doctors’ strike, a weak economy and persistent high inflation”, noted The Guardian.

As junior doctors begin a five-day strike in England today, the longest walk-out of its kind in the NHS’s history, pressure is mounting for the government to bring an end to the repeated industrial action.

But with inflation currently at 8.7%, Sunak – who has promised to cut it to about 5.3% by the end of the year – wants to avoid pay increases which could “fuel a wage-price spiral”, said the paper.

He has indicated they could overrule the pay review bodies, arguing they need to make difficult decisions in a bid to halve inflation.

In an interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sunak said he was determined to make “affordable” and “responsible” decisions on public-sector pay, which “may not always be popular in the short term”, noted The Telegraph.

He said there was “no point” in him “doing something that sounds popular and nice today, for example on public-sector pay” because he “would be giving with one hand” and “taking with the other through higher inflation and interest rates”.

But Sky News said “it has now been widely suggested” that Sunak will back pay rises of around 6% for public-sector employees in 2023-24. Each department would then publish the independent review body reports and endorse their recommendations.

The rises “could potentially halt further strike action”, said the broadcaster, but “this decision is ultimately down to unions and their members”.

Huw Edwards’s wife Vicky Flind has named him as the BBC presenter accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour. Around the same time, the Metropolitan Police said that they had no information to suggest that any criminal offence had been committed.

The initial story, published in The Sun, was that an unnamed BBC employee had paid a teenager £35,000 for sexually explicit photos. The alleged victim’s mother said that her child had used the money to fund a crack cocaine addiction, and alleged that the payments had begun when he or she was 17. It is a crime to create, distribute or possess sexual imagery of under-18s.

The family reported the issue to the BBC in May, and went to The Sun when nothing seemed to be done about it: they claimed that their child was still receiving payments from Edwards in June.

Allegations and denial

The story had set off fevered speculation on social media about the presenter’s identity, leading the likes of Gary Lineker and Jeremy Vine (who then led calls for the presenter to make his identity known) to issue statements over the weekend denying that it was them. On Monday, however, events took an unexpected turn when a lawyer for the young person dismissed The Sun’s story as “rubbish”, insisting that “nothing inappropriate or unlawful” had taken place. The lawyer said the person, now 20, had sent a denial to The Sun, but the paper had published its story regardless.

The next day, an unnamed person in their early 20s claimed that the presenter had contacted them on a dating app and put them under pressure to meet up. When they hinted that they could name him publicly, they say he sent them abusive messages. In later reports, The Sun alleged that the star had broken lockdown rules to meet a 23-year-old he’d met on a dating site.

In an interview about the BBC’s handling of the family’s complaint, director-general Tim Davie conceded that lessons needed to be learnt, but he defended the BBC’s failure to raise it with Edwards until last Thursday. He said that managers had had to try to validate the complaint first. The Met has said the BBC can now resume an internal inquiry it had paused while police investigations were ongoing.

A question of privacy

Being a BBC reporter “must be a nightmare” this week, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. For days, they were standing outside their own workplace, reporting on serious allegations concerning the institution they work for, and a person they may have known – while not being able to tell their viewers anything much at all (though apparently they all knew his identity).

The BBC has treated its audience with “a degree of contempt”, said Matthew Garrahan in the FT. True, it had legitimate concerns about Edwards’s welfare and that of the young person. But that was all the more reason to temper its reporting. Instead, it spent the best part of a week leading its news bulletins with “breathless coverage” of the story while declining to name the presenter. It was even running a live-blog, for goodness sake.

Our strict privacy laws made it difficult for the press to name him, said Sean O’Neill in The Times. The 2012 Leveson Report “set the direction of travel” in this developing area of the law, and Cliff Richard’s 2018 legal victory over the BBC (for reporting a police raid of his home sparked by unfounded sexual assault allegations) cemented the course. But the wave of online speculation as to the BBC star’s identity – in which numerous people were wrongly named – suggests that it may be time to “redress the balance” between privacy and the public interest, by giving the press some of its freedom back.

More questions than answers

Yet the facts at hand were always murky, said Jane Martinson in The Guardian: even five days after breaking the story, The Sun still hadn’t produced any firm evidence of anything beyond “unwise, questionable behaviour”. Flind’s statement doesn’t say much, says The Daily Telegraph, except that her husband is suffering “serious mental health issues” and is in hospital. It’s still hard to know what to make of this strange news week, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, but at the moment it looks as though what it has left us with is families “torn asunder, lives destroyed, and the BBC trashed”.

In her statement, Vicky Flind noted that her husband had previously been treated for depression (something he had discussed publicly) and said that he will remain in hospital for the foreseeable future. However, she said that once he is well enough, he intends to respond to the stories published about him.

Even before the police’s statement, insiders at The Sun were distancing themselves from the most incendiary allegations in their reporting, said The Guardian, notably that the presenter had effectively commissioned child sex abuse images.

A new suspect has been named in the murder of Stephen Lawrence, sparking a furious response from his mother and renewed calls for officers involved in the case to be sacked for repeatedly bungling the investigation.

Three decades on from the UK’s most notorious racially motivated killing, the Metropolitan Police has named Matthew White, who died in 2021 aged 50, as a suspect.

White first came to the attention of the police in 1993 as a witness to the attack. He was arrested and interviewed in 2000 and again in 2013 “but the Met reportedly seriously mishandled inquiries related to him”, reported The Independent.

Five men have previously been suspected of carrying out the fatal stabbing in southeast London in April 1993. Two of them, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were handed life sentences in 2012 after being found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey.

However, Duwayne Brooks, who was with Lawrence on the night of his murder, always maintained there was a sixth attacker. Now, thanks to an investigation by the BBC, he is believed to have been identified.

Based on witness testimony, police documents and new evidence “that shows how officers mishandled investigations relating to White”, the BBC’s Daniel De Simone said that “at key moments the police failed to pull together all these pieces of evidence” on the man known publicly as Witness K.

The information regarding White “raises fresh concerns over the Met’s decision to cease its investigation into the murder three years ago”, said the Evening Standard.

Despite a new apology by the Met for its “failings”, the naming of White has prompted a furious reaction from the mother of Stephen Lawrence. Baroness Doreen Lawrence demanded “serious sanctions” against the officers who failed to investigate him.

“Only when police officers lose their jobs can the public have confidence that failure and incompetence will not be tolerated and that change will happen,” she said.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called on police chiefs to “ramp up” the use of stop and search to clamp down on knife crime and “save more lives”.

In a message to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, Braverman said that officers who use the controversial powers have her “full support” and called for the “dangerous culture” of carrying weapons to be “brought to a stop”.

Stop and search has long been a controversial police power. Its critics say there is little evidence it prevents violent crime; the Home Office, however, argues it is a “common sense policing tactic”.

There are two categories of stop and search the public can be stopped under. Suspicion-based stop and search is used when an officer believes they have reasonable grounds to suspect that someone is carrying stolen goods, drugs, weapons, a tool that could be used to commit crimes or illegal fireworks.

Suspicionless stop and search, often referred to as a section 60 stop and search, requires police officers to only “reasonably believe” that a serious crime “may” be carried out. In 2022, as home secretary, Priti Patel permanently lifted restrictions put in place in 2014 by Theresa May on section 60 orders, lowering the rank of police officers who can authorise such an order, as well as extending the amount of time an order can be in place.

Additionally, Patel removed the need for police to publicly announce that a section 60 order is in place. But the Home Office said it has updated its guidance and that police should communicate when a section 60 is in place, “unless this would hinder a sensitive operation”.

1. Pro: fights knife crime

The Home Office has argued that the use of stop and search is necessary to “seize dangerous weapons and prevent knife crime”.

According to government data, more than 100,000 weapons have been removed from UK streets since 2019 through a range of tactics, and “almost half” of these were seized through stop and search, leading to a further 220,000 arrests.

It said the drive to increase the use of stop and search was to ensure police officers are “prepared to use the full powers at their disposal” so that they can be “more proactive in preventing violence before it occurs”.

2. Con: little effect on violent crime

Critics of stop and search say the causal link between bringing down violent crime and stop and search is “shaky”. That’s because stop and search “doesn’t technically serve to reduce crime, but to investigate it”, said the i news site, which means it is difficult to measure its role in crime reduction.

The government’s own research has found there is “little evidence” to suggest that stop and search “provides an effective deterrent to offending”, according to a House of Commons Library report from 2022.

Based on a study from the Centre for Crime and Justice, which analysed 10 years of data, it found that stop and search “has only a very weak and inconsistent association with crime” and that its deterrent effect is “likely to be small, at best”.

3. Pro: shows police visibility

In a major policing report published this month, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, acknowledged that stop and search is a polarising issue for the public, but argued that it remains an “essential policing tool” that needs to be “better understood” by the public.

At a time when confidence in the police force is low, stop and search can provide a “visible representation” of police officers “taking action” on the streets, which in turn “improves confidence throughout the wider community” in policing, he said.

4. Con: Black people targeted

Critics of stop and search argue it is a tactic that disproportionately targets people from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

Recent data on stop and search activity in London, provided by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), revealed that Black people in London, regardless of age, were three times more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts from April to June 2022.

When these stop and searches specifically targeted weapons, points or blades, Black Londoners of all age groups were seven times more likely to be stopped compared to white Londoners. This was a marked increase on the previous period, January to March, when Black Londoners were five times more likely to be stopped than white Londoners.

The study found that only 44% of Black Londoners believed that the police used stop and search powers fairly.

5. Pro: effective investigative tool

Stop and search, as an investigative tool, has shown some good results when it comes to unearthing crimes, particularly drug offences.

According to Metropolitan Police data, approximately 30% of stop and searches conducted across England and Wales during the 2017/18 period led to what experts term a “positive outcome”. This means action was taken against those who were searched including arrests, warnings and penalty notices.

In London, 60% of positive outcomes were related to drug offences, 11% to theft, fraud and counterfeit offences, and 9% were for “weapons, points and blades”, according to Full Fact.

6. Con: legality concerns

There has been concern from two police watchdogs – Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services and the Independent Office for Police Conduct – that some searches are not being carried out lawfully.

A 2021 report by Wendy Williams, HM inspector of constabulary, found that 14% of stop and searches were conducted without reasonable cause, while a further 22% were carried out with “weak” recorded grounds.

The Metropolitan Police will no longer attend emergency calls linked to mental health incidents from later this year, the force’s commissioner has confirmed.

In a letter to health and social care bosses seen by The Guardian, Mark Rowley has stated his intention to order officers not to attend such incidents from 31 August onwards.

Rowley has argued such a move is required as officers are being “diverted from their core role of fighting crime”, the newspaper added, with the commissioner stating the current situation is “untenable”.

But questions have now been raised about what the change could mean for the police, 999-call responses and mental health services more generally.

‘Potentially alarming’

Zoe Billingham, a former inspector of constabulary who is now chairwoman of NHS mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme of her increasing concern at the “terrible quandary” facing families with a loved one struggling with their mental health.

Billingham suggested that police are the only agency for those suffering a mental health crisis, and warned of a potential “vacuum” once this service is removed, stating the policy is “potentially alarming”.

Others concurred, with deputy charity boss for Rethink Mental Illness, Brian Dow, having told The Times it is “not appropriate” for the Metropolitan Police to impose an “artificial deadline and threaten to walk away”. He argued such a move would heighten the risk of those in mental health crisis being “left in limbo” as they look for support.

A former Met superintendent agreed, telling ITV the policy would cause “a lot of anxiety”. “To pull out now I think is a dereliction of duty,” he told the broadcaster, “I think it’s extreme, it’s unnecessary”.

“Police and health services struggle to serve everyone with limited resources”, and concerns linger about what the decision could mean, said Sky News’s Martin Brunt.

He questioned the notion of mental health patients securing a “better deal”, and asked “what other patients will suffer?”.

‘Too long spent babysitting’

Nationally, officers spend “a million hours a year waiting for mental health patients to be assessed”, said the Daily Express, and it is this that Met Commissioner Mark Rowley appears to argue is a waste of time.

Writing for the newspaper, Andy Bell, the chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health, said the police “should not be the default responder to a mental health emergency” and called for “greater investment” to help Britons “before they get to crisis point”.

Rowley has insisted the Met is “failing Londoners twice” by sending police to deal with mental health crises, and in not using the force’s time in the most efficient way.

In the letter to health and social care services, he added that allowing the “status quo to remain” would mean he is “not setting up officers to succeed”.

Rowley is modelling the Met Police’s latest actions on a scheme first implemented by Humberside Police in 2020, entitled Right Care Right Person, which tasks health professionals with responding to mental health crises instead of the police.

An inspection undertaken by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services found the Humberside force has saved “1,100 police hours per month” by doing so, The Independent reported.

The newspaper added that the report said that the public received “more timely care from the most appropriate care provider”.

Ken Marsh of the Metropolitan Police Federation argued officers spend too long “babysitting” people, The Mirror reported, although he did concede “it is not for the commissioner to say whether my colleagues can or can’t attend”.

Rowley “wants to prompt national debate about what society regards as the priorities for forces,” wrote the BBC’s Mark Easton, “and whether there needs to be greater focus on other public services’ responsibilities”, but also questioned “what are the police for?”.

In a statement, the Met said that while police are “compassionate and highly skilled, they are not trained to deliver mental health care”. The force confirmed officers will continue to respond “where there is an immediate threat to life”.

A review of the Metropolitan Police commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard represents “do or die” for Britain’s biggest police force, Whitehall sources have warned.

The “excoriating” 300-page report by Baroness Casey of Blackstock will expose “institutional problems of sexism, racism and homophobia” when it is published tomorrow, said The Times.

According to the paper, Whitehall insiders said Casey would call for a new oversight board to monitor how the Met implements her recommendations, leaving the path clear for “more radical reform, including structural changes, if a drastic overhaul did not occur”. And if the London force does not reform its “toxic culture”, it reportedly “faces being broken up”.

No ‘God-given right’

“The prospect of knocking down an institution which is almost 200 years old may not command widespread support in Whitehall or at New Scotland Yard,” said Danny Shaw, the former home affairs correspondent for the BBC, in The Spectator.

But it is a “possible pathway out of this depressing cycle” of scandals that has hit the Met, including the killing of Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens and the crimes of serial rapist officer David Carrick. A “structural overhaul”, said Shaw, could help “create a new service with a fresh identity, ethos and mission, focused on the capital, and a separate body responsible for national counter-terrorism and security”.

The leader of Britain’s police chiefs is also backing calls for reform, arguing that an organisation like Scotland Yard has no “God-given right to continue existing as it does”. Martin Hewitt, the outgoing chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told The Guardian that “you can’t police where there is no legitimacy from the public”.

But Hewitt, a former Met assistant commissioner, said the London force’s new chief, Mark Rowley, should be given the opportunity to deliver on his promises to restore public trust and improve policing standards.

‘Trying to turn the Titanic’

Reforming the Met is like “trying to turn the Titanic” for Rowley and will take too long, said Donna Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The London force is “enormous”, similar to “the size of five average-sized police forces across England and Wales”, she told BBC Radio 5 Live. Change needs to happen sooner rather than later “because we cannot have any more situations like David Carrick coming forward”, said Jones, who is among those calling for the force to be broken up.

The Met is “just too big and the toxic culture is too deeply set into its foundations”, agreed Dr John Fox, a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. “Rather than tinker with the branches, perhaps the root needs to be dug up, thoughtfully divided and transplanted,” he wrote in an article published last month on Police Professional.

Fox suggested a “single force south of the Thames and an east-west split in the north”, or for the existing suburban forces surrounding London to absorb their nearest outer London boroughs.

“In the face of so much damage being done to public confidence,” he added, the current force structure “should not be considered sacrosanct or immune to full-scale reform”.

Questions are being asked about how a serving Metropolitan Police officer convicted of multiple sexual offences including 24 rapes was allowed to carry on unchecked for so long despite numerous complaints against him over many years.

It has been revealed that PC David Carrick had pleaded guilty to 49 charges against 12 victims covering a total of 85 separate offences over nearly two decades, making him one of Britain’s most prolific rapists.

Yet while the “details are harrowing”, said The New Statesman’s Rachel Cunliffe, the “really chilling bit is that none of this should have been a surprise”. Allegations were “ignored” and he was allowed into a force “that enabled him to commit these crimes” by “nurturing a toxic working culture”.

What did the papers say?

“The missed opportunities to stop Carrick in his tracks as his police career unfolded are damning,” said the Daily Mail.

The paper reported that “nine times he came to the attention of fellow officers and nine times he was allowed to continue working”, adding that “eight of those times included alleged incidents involving women, but he was never arrested or even suspended from his role as an elite firearms officer guarding embassies and parliamentary buildings”.

Like fellow police officer Wayne Couzens, who confessed to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, Carrick “used his position as a police officer to gain the trust of his victims, sometimes flashing his warrant card and telling them they would be ‘safe’ with him”, The Telegraph reported.

The paper said the shocking revelations mark the “first major crisis” for the new Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, who is less than five months into the job.

Issuing what the Daily Mail described as a “grovelling apology”, Rowley said opportunities to remove Carrick from policing had been missed due to weak policies and weak decisions.

But while he vowed to “put in place ruthless systems to squeeze out those who shouldn’t be with us”, he told Good Morning Britain that he could not guarantee that a woman visiting a police station to report a sexual offence would not meet a police officer whose past behaviour was now under review, or who was tolerating similar behaviour in their department.

What next?

The Telegraph said the scale of the task facing Rowley and the Met was “laid bare” on Monday when it emerged that more than 1,000 officers accused of sex offences or domestic abuse were still in service despite currently being under review.

Ultimately, said Byline Times’s Sian Norris, “the Carrick case exposes two urgent, frightening and painful issues”.

“The first is… that the orchard is rotten,” she said. “As well as having been found to be institutionally racist and institutionally corrupt, the police is institutionally misogynistic because its structures are built on pillars of patriarchal power, violence and authority.”

She added that “the second issue is that misogyny in policing reflects misogyny in society”, fostering a “culture of impunity when it comes to men’s violence against women and girls”.

Critics say that the cases of Couzens and Carrick are not isolated incidents but part of a clear pattern within the police that also covers Charing Cross police station officers swapping jokes about gender-based violence and PCs exchanging lurid photos of the murdered sisters Nicola Smallman and Bibaa Henry.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has previously made recommendations for the force to tackle what it called “toxic masculinity, sexism, and misogyny”, only for fresh revelations to emerge that further undermine trust in the police.

“Police culture matters to us all,” wrote Stephen Otter, a former Met commander and chief constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, in the Financial Times in February last year. “If the public trust the police, they are more likely to co-operate with them. This consent has real conditions attached; when police behave badly, as they did at Charing Cross, co-operation is withdrawn and suspicion grows until the whole fragile structure is re-erected.”

But trust has to be earned, said Anna Birley, a councillor who co-founded the Reclaim These Streets group after Sarah Everard’s murder, in The Independent.

“How do we trust an institution if thousands of decades-old allegations are only just being dealt with properly now?” she said, adding that while it is “right this review is happening, it’s enraging that women have been gaslit by the police for so long.”

Birley said: “We are tired of being told misogyny is being dealt with, when every fresh horror that emerges from the Met shows us that they categorically are not.”

History suggests the “scale and entrenched nature of Scotland Yard’s problems is beyond the reach of individual commissioners”, said Otter. “But permanent change in the Met will require a long-term plan, and one to which successive commissioners are obliged to commit. This means the Home Office and London mayor will have to see it through.

“Many would say I’m naive to even imagine this might happen. I sincerely hope I am not.”

More than 100 people have been arrested in the UK’s biggest ever fraud investigation into what the Metropolitan Police described as “an international one-stop spoofing shop”.

The Met began investigating the iSpoof website in June 2021. The site allowed users, who paid for iSpoof’s services in bitcoin, to make it look as though calls they made to individuals were coming from trusted sources, including “banks, tax offices and other official bodies as they attempted to defraud victims”.

iSpoof “turned ordinary crooks into cyber criminals”, said The Sun, using “slick videos to advertise would-be lawbreakers through encrypted messaging apps”. The website was set up in December 2020 and amassed 59,000 user accounts.

The Met’s Operation Elaborate involved the National Crime Agency, Europol, Eurojust, Dutch authorities and the FBI working with Scotland Yard’s cyber crime unit. The investigation found that around 10 million fraudulent phone calls were made through iSpoof globally in the 12 months from August 2021; just over a third of those were made in the UK.

With more than 200,000 potential victims in the UK alone, people are thought to have lost millions of pounds overall. The Met said that the average loss from people who have reported being targeted is thought to be £10,000, while “one victim was scammed out of £3m”, said The Guardian. The paper added that “those running the scam shop made about £3.2m over a 20-month period, it is estimated”.

Met Commissioner Mark Rowley described “the exploitation of technology by organised criminals” as “one of the greatest challenges for law enforcement in the 21st century”. Working with international partners, Rowley said UK police “are reinventing the way fraud is investigated”.

Police are asking anyone who thinks they have been contacted as part of a spoof number scam to make a report online through Action Fraud.

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts:

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In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Policing

The new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, began his role on Monday, a week before one of the biggest policing operation in UK history: the Queen’s funeral. And after the official mourning period has ended, Rowley will face many other challenges. Following a series of scandals and crises involving the Met, how can he implement change?

Sweden’s far-right

The Sweden Democrats enjoyed a surge of support in the country’s general elections this week, winning around 20% of the total vote. The nationalist party’s campaign focused on gang violence and immigration, two key issues for Sweden’s electorate. As part of the ruling right-wing coalition, the party look set to play a bigger role in Sweden’s domestic and international affairs.

‘Passkeys’

The rollout this week of Apple’s iOS 16 operating system brought a number of changes for iPhone users, including the introduction of Passkeys – billed as an ultra-secure technology set to replace passwords. Apple has teamed up with Google, Meta and Microsoft for the push towards a passwordless future. But will the public get behind the tech giants’ ambitious project?

The Metropolitan Police commissioner has admitted that some officers are “treating women appallingly” after an interim report condemned the behaviour of hundreds of London-based officers as well as the force’s systems of redress.

Mark Rowley replaced Cressida Dick in July as commissioner at Scotland Yard following a series of controversies and scandals, including the murder of Sarah Everard, the strip search of Child Q, and findings of misconduct at Charing Cross Police Station.

An independent review of standards at the force was commissioned by Dick in the aftermath of the rape, kidnap and murder of Everard by serving Met PC Wayne Couzens. Baroness Casey, who is leading the review, published her interim report today.

Who is Mark Rowley?

Born in Birmingham in 1964, Rowley attended Handsworth Grammar School before studying mathematics at Cambridge, where he rowed for the St Catharine’s College 1st VIII. “But even before he went to Cambridge he knew he wanted to be a police officer,” said the BBC’s home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford.

Rowley was turned down by the Metropolitan Police, however, owing to “poor eyesight”, and instead “joined his local force, West Midlands Police, in 1987”, Sandford continued. In 1989, while “still a probationer, he was beaten unconscious and had his nose broken while responding to a pub fight”.

Rowley climbed “through the ranks” in his own profession, after “pioneering some innovative ideas to tackle the 1990s burglary epidemic as a young detective”, before joining the National Criminal Intelligence Service, a forerunner to the National Crime Agency.

In 2011, he joined the Met as an assistant commissioner, and led the response to the riots sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan.

He was appointed head of counterterrorism at the force in 2014, as the UK faced the threat of Islamic State “and its ability to attract young Britons to its campaign of violence”, along with “a rise in the extreme far-right”, said The Guardian’s police correspondent Vikram Dodd.

Rowley was “the man who had to steady the nation’s nerves” during multiple terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, said the BBC’s Sandford.

The then counterterrorism chief applied for the role of Met commissioner that same year, but lost out to Cressida Dick. He retired from policing in 2018, before returning to take up his new role.

Rowley is now encountering “the biggest series of challenges any commissioner in modern times has faced”, said Dodd, after the Met was placed in special measures in June by the policing inspectorate, “for the first time in its history”.

‘Systemic racism and misogyny’

Published today, Casey’s interim report found “systemic” racism and misogyny, with allegations of sexual misconduct or discrimination less likely to result in a case to answer than other claims.

The review team “talked to officers who said they had observed colleagues who had displayed shocking behaviour but had no confidence in the force’s internal misconduct system to tackle it”, reported Police Oracle.

The report gave an example of one serving officer who had 11 misconduct notices for allegations “involving abuse, sexual harassment and assault, fraud, improper disclosure of information and distribution of an explicit image of himself”.

In a written response to Casey, Rowley said he was “appalled” by the extent of the findings she exposed and said “the public would be shocked that we do not have the final say when dismissing those who are guilty of gross misconduct”. He has accepted the findings in full and asked the Home Office to consider changing the regulations to give more power to the senior management team of the force.

He told journalists “We currently sack a bit less than one person a week – that’s clearly massively under engineered. There must be hundreds who shouldn’t be here.”

Asked on LBC whether he could look presenter Nick Ferrari in the eye and “say there’s not another Wayne Couzens in the force at the moment”, Rowley replied: “I can’t look you in the eye and say that we haven’t got officers who are treating women appallingly. Absolutely not.”

Casey found that “the leadership of the Met has for years ignored the need to get rid of the bad, corrupt, dangerous officers and that has put their families, their fellow officers and the people they serve - the public - all at risk”, said the BBC’s special correspondent Lucy Manning.

“And this isn’t her last word. She has much more to expose about the Met, its officers and its way of working when she delivers her final report.”

The 100-day plan to ‘turn the force around’

The police shooting last month of a 24-year-old unarmed black man, Chris Kaba, has also sparked street protests in the capital. The Independent Office for Police Conduct has opened a homicide inquiry into the death, and the Met officer who shot Kaba dead has been suspended from duty.

The Guardian reported that Rowley’s arrival marks the “launch of a 100-day plan to turn Britain’s biggest force around”. He is seeking to “lift public confidence” in the force by “increasing the proportion of crimes the Met solves and boosting the number of officers in local neighbourhoods to build relations”, the paper said.

Rowley reiterated his commitment to reforming the Met when he took up the role, pledging to “begin the journey of reform to renew policing by consent”.

The arrests of anti-monarchist protesters has sparked furious debate between free speech campaigners and commentators from across the political spectrum.

The Metropolitan Police has stressed that people “absolutely have a right to protest” against the monarchy following the death of the Queen. But anger is mounting after a string of people were detained for expressing anti-royal views.

Barrister and climate activist Paul Powlesland said he had been threatened with arrest under the Public Order Act after holding up a blank piece of paper in London’s Parliament Square. Powlesland told The Guardian that “interventions like that are having a chilling effect”.

‘Not the week for protest’?

Anger over the police interventions has been stoked by videos posted on social media showing protesters being detained. Powlesland tweeted footage of an exchange “that he appeared to have had with the officer, who could be heard telling him that someone might be offended if the lawyer were to write ‘not my king’ on the piece of paper he was carrying”, The Guardian reported.

Powlesland told the paper that “I speak in a certain way, was dressed in a certain way and understood the law, but someone else might have been in a different situation”.

In a separate incident, history tutor Symon Hill was detained on suspicion of a public order offence after shouting “who elected him?” during the proclamation in Oxford on Sunday of Charles III as the new king. In a blog post, Hill said he was later “de-arrested” and taken home in a police van, but was told that he would be asked to attend a further interview and might be charged.

Police officers’ seemingly heavy-handed approaches have been criticised by many commentators from across the political divide, although others are “supporting these arrests”, said the Daily Express.

Ruth Smeeth, chief executive of Index on Censorship, told Politics Home that “we must guard against this event being used, by accident or design, to erode in any way the freedom of expression that citizens of this country enjoy”. Jodie Beck, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “Protest is not a gift from the state, it is a fundamental right.”

Veteran journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that the arrest of anti-monarchy protesters was “outrageous”.

“We are a democratic country. We are an open disputatious country where we can say what is on our minds and I don’t believe for a moment that this is what the new king would have wanted,” Marr said.

Brendan O’Neill, chief political writer at Spiked, also condemned the “alarming, almost medieval act of censorship”. In an article in The Spectator, O’Neill described the arrests as “an intolerable assault on freedom of speech”.

“But many people who were coming to pay their respects in Windsor said this was not the week for protest,” reported Sky News’ home editor Jason Farrell.

Critics called such protesters “disrespectful” and “crass”, Farrell wrote, “though some still felt people should not be arrested even if their comments were offensive”.

Test of new legislation

Campaign groups including Big Brother Watch claimed that the growing number of reported anti-monarchist arrests were likely to be “unlawful”.

The arrests represent the first major public test of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, “which was drawn up by ministers largely in response to disruptive protests by Extinction Rebellion last year”, said Politics Home, “and voted through the Commons in April, despite fierce criticism from opposition parties”.

The legislation gives police more power to disrupt protests deemed to cause “significant impact” on others. Interpretation of that definition “clearly depends on the circumstances and sensitivities of the situation”, said Sky News’ Farrell.

But, he continued, “what is complicated in this instance is that two things are happening at the same time” – a period of national mourning but also a new king being proclaimed. “So, it is a big constitutional change during a time of high emotion.”

A number of protest groups have ruled out campaigning over the common week.

“But some people will, and it is the police, in the first instance, who will have to decide what is and is not appropriate,” Farrell concluded.

A Metropolitan Police officer has been suspended from frontline duties after fatally shooting an unarmed black man last week.

Chris Kaba was driving a car in south London on 5 September when the vehicle, which was later found to be registered to a different name, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), was picked up by an automatic number plate recognition camera for having recently been linked to a firearms incident.

Police officers pursued the vehicle, which was “subsequently cornered by two police cars” in Streatham Hill, said HuffPost. A specialist firearms officer then fired a single shot through the driver’s side of the windscreen.

The IOPC said that CPR was “immediately administered” and ambulance service support quickly requested. Kaba, who was 24, died later that night in hospital.

In a statement last week, his family said: “We are devastated; we need answers and we need accountability.

“We are worried that if Chris had not been Black, he would have been arrested on Monday evening and not had his life cut short.”

It’s since become known that Kaba was expecting a child with his fiancée, Karima Waite, who described the rapper as a “very kind, loving and caring young man”, said South London Press.

The IOPC’s investigation “entered a new phase” four days after Kaba’s death, when it was announced that a homicide investigation had been opened.

Kaba’s death “has shaken people across the UK”, said HuffPost. Metro reported that “hundreds of protesters” gathered in central London last weekend “to express fury” at the shooting.

At a vigil last night, the atmosphere was “tense”, with many in attendance saying that the officer’s suspension “is far too little, far too late”, said the BBC.

Assistant Commissioner Amanda Pearson said that the decision to suspend the firearms officer “does not determine the outcome of the IOPC’s investigation”.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted that he welcomed the decision, and said he is in regular contact with the police watchdog and the Met’s new commissioner, Mark Rowley.

The Metropolitan Police has said 24-year-old Owami Davies is “safe and well” after being found in Hampshire following the 118th reported sighting by a member of the public.

The student nurse was last seen walking along London Road in West Croydon on 7 July. She had left her family home in Grays, Essex, three days earlier on 4 July and was reported missing two days later.

“This is the outcome we were all hoping and praying for,” said Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Penney. He added that his team were “immensely relieved” that Davies had been found, and thanked the media and public for sharing appeals to find the missing student.

Commander Paul Brogden acknowledged that concerns had been raised about the police search. It emerged last weekend that the police had been in direct contact with Davies on 6 July, but were not aware at the time that she was a missing person because the central police database had not been updated.

Handling of case under ‘scrutiny’

The force’s handling of the case faced “increased scrutiny” when it became known that Scotland Yard had issued CCTV images which incorrectly identified another black woman as Davies, said The Guardian. “The Met hurriedly apologised and withdrew the images”.

Brogden and Penney said they were trying to “compassionately” deal with finding out how and why Davies disappeared. The police had been working through 50,000 hours of CCTV footage in an attempt to trace the student nurse’s movements.

Five people were arrested and bailed over Davies’s disappearance, two on suspicion of murder and three on suspicion of kidnap. The men remain on bail and officers have confirmed that “a decision on what happens next to them would follow a ‘full debrief’”, said the BBC.

The police said Davies appeared to be in “good health” and was in “a place of safety”, and confirmed that she had spoken to her family.

The Metropolitan Police has warned its officers they face disciplinary action if they participate in a gay nightclub’s “Porn Idol” contest in their spare time. The force has advised officers to not partake in the event at Heaven over concerns about “upholding standards” and potential “awkward” encounters when they return to the venue in uniform on shift. The Independent said the event, which is hosted by drag queens from the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, sees men and women strip for cash prizes at the venue.

Moon conditions may support human life

Researchers have found that parts of the Moon may provide stable temperatures for humans, reported CNN. The Moon has pits with shaded areas that steadily hover around 17C (63 degrees Fahrenheit) a temperate range that’s stable for humans, the team of experts found. “We could be able to establish a long-term presence on the Moon sooner than may have otherwise been possible,” said lead study author Tyler Horvath, a doctoral student in planetary science at University of California, Los Angeles.

Retrain your mind to ease back pain

Back pain sufferers can ease their discomfort by retraining how their back and brain communicate, a study suggests. A randomised controlled trial run by researchers at UNSW Sydney and Neuroscience Research Australia found that sensorimotor retraining alters how people think about their body in pain, how they process sensory information from their back and how they move their back during activities. More than 10m people in the UK report persistent back pain, and the condition is the leading cause of disability globally, noted The Times.

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​Scotland Yard has been accused of “deferential policing” after admitting not questioning Boris Johnson before deciding not to fine the prime minister for attending two lockdown-breaching gatherings in Downing Street.

The Metropolitan Police issued fixed-penalty notices (FPNs) earlier this year to attendees at the two events at No. 10 in November and December 2020.

But “despite the prime minister giving speeches at both of the wine-fuelled gatherings”, he was not included in the round of Partygate penalties, said The Independent.

And although evidence considered by the Met’s Operation Hillman inquiry included a picture of Johnson raising a glass of wine at one of the events, the force did not send him a questionnaire about his involvement.

Downing Street “has previously briefed that Johnson did not receive police questionnaires relating to some lockdown events”, but the latest revelation “is thought to be the first time the Metropolitan Police has admitted this, under details released as part of a legal challenge”, said The Guardian.

Johnson “received a single £50 fine” in April for breaking Covid laws at a birthday party thrown for him in June 2020, the paper added.

Judicial review

The Met’s admission came in response to a judicial review of the force’s investigation of Johnson’s presence at lockdown parties. The review was brought by non-profit legal campaign group The Good Law Project (GLP).

“The public has a right to know what really went on inside the Partygate investigation,” said a statement on GLP website. “The Met’s actions have raised grave concerns about the deferential way in which they are policing those in power.”

Although the Met has admitted to not sending Johnson questionnaires about the two 2020 gatherings, the force has continued “to fail to provide any explanation of how they cleared the prime minister”, the statement added.

Trust problem

“This [case] continues to be about what it was always about: trust in policing and the rule of law,” GLP director Jo Maugham told The Guardian. “Seventy-two per cent of voters think there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Why won’t the Met address that perception?”

In June, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary announced that the Met was being placed on special measures. The move followed “a number of high-profile scandals, including the overzealous policing of a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard and reports of racism and misogyny within its ranks”, reported The National.

Just 15 minutes of police patrols can reduce levels of violent crime by more than 70%, according to a new study.

The Youth Endowment Fund analysis of an Essex Police pilot in Southend-on-Sea in summer 2020 found that violent crime fell by 74% on days when patrols took place.

Other patrol schemes have got similar results. Operation Rowan in Bedfordshire “involved patrols of 15 minutes each day in 30 hotspot areas where a third of the county’s serious violent crime was taking place”, said The Times’ crime editor Fiona Hamilton.The patrols were credited for a 38% reduction in violence and robbery.

West Midlands police reported a 14% drop in street crimes and antisocial behaviour following patrols in Birmingham.

While forces nationwide are spending more money on “the latest artificial intelligence to predict crime patterns”, the findings “underline the effectiveness of old-fashioned policing”, wrote Hamilton.

The analysis by the Youth Endowment Fund, which works to stop young people becoming involved in violence, suggested that patrols in crime hotspots resulted in significant drops in wider crime too, and fewer calls to emergency services.

“Hot spots policing” – which focuses policing resources and activities on locations where crime is most concentrated – “can also make a difference in the surrounding areas”, said UK law enforcement journal Police Professional.

The data “boosts” arguments by new Metropolitan Police commissioner Mark Rowley, who takes over in autumn, that the UK needs “more bobbies on the beat”, said The Times’ Hamilton. In his first public statement after landing the role in the scandal-hit force, the former head of UK counterterrorism policing pledged to “fight crime with communities – not unilaterally dispense tactics”.

The policing watchdog has placed the Metropolitan Police under special measures after a force-wide inspection raised “substantial and persistent concerns”.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said in a statement that “we are now monitoring” the London force “to help it make improvements”.

The measures “will place extra scrutiny on the Met”, which is “already suffering a leadership vacuum and fighting to improve public trust”, said The Times.

What triggered the move?

The decision followed the uncovering of a “litany” of failings by Scotland Yard in “fighting crime and serving victims”, The Guardian’s police and crime correspondent Vikram Dodd reported. The watchdog pointed to misconduct scandals, a failure to stamp out corruption, and “barely adequate standard of crime-recording accuracy”, with an estimated 69,000 crimes going unrecorded each year.

Matt Parr, who led the recent inspection, said other concerns included a lack of victim engagement, a vast backlog of online child abuse referrals, and a “lack of detailed understanding” of capability across all policing.

The Met was also found to be failing to meet national standards, and to be making errors on stop and search. The grounds for a quarter of stops were not recorded, “thus thwarting scrutiny of whether they were justifiable”, said Dodd.

What are special measures?

Inspectors usually conduct a “root-and-branch review of forces every few years”, according to The Times. But the watchdog can escalate a force into the “engage” stage, also known as special measures, on the basis of “significant or enduring concerns” about their ability to address underperformance.

For the Met, that means increased scrutiny and a requirement for the force’s leadership to produce an improvement plan. The Met will also have to report regularly to inspectors, the Home Office and other organisations.

And “later on”, a policing performance oversight group will scrutinise the changes made by the Met to “address its problems”, said��BBC home affairs researcher Lucy Gilder.

Only three other of the total 43 forces in England and Wales are in special measures. Greater Manchester, Cleveland and Gloucestershire are facing the same restrictions.

What next for the Met?

The watchdog’s criticisms follow a series of scandals involving the force. Inspection chief Parr said that the abduction, rape and murder last year of Sarah Everard by a serving officer had also had a “chilling effect on public trust and confidence”.

Former Met commissioner Dame Cressida Dick was forced out of the role earlier this year after losing the confidence of London Mayor Sadiq Khan as well.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is seeking a replacement for Dick, with the shortlist reduced to two Met insiders: Mark Rowley, a former head of counterterrorism, and Nick Ephgrave, currently part of the force’s top leadership.

A source told The Telegraph that the special measures move could prove “helpful for the new commissioner”, as “a launchpad to reform”.

Backing the special measures move, Patel said she expected “the Met and the London mayor to take immediate action to begin addressing” the issues raised.

Khan said that he would work closely with the watchdog and that the extra scrutiny was a “crucial first step” in reforming the force.

In a statement, the Met acknowledged the “cumulative impact of events and problems” facing the force. “We understand the impact this has had on communities and share their disappointment,” the statement continued.

“We are determined to be a police service Londoners can be proud of. We are talking to the inspectorate about next steps.”

1. Boris is deluded if he thinks firing Sunak can save him from oblivion

Allister Heath in The Telegraph

on chancellors and scapegoats

“Will Rishi Sunak jump, or will he be pushed?” asks Allister Heath in The Telegraph. Boris Johnson’s allies have reportedly “urged him” to appoint Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, while some of Sunak’s supporters “believe that, even at this late date, he would be better off leaping from a sinking ship”. But “such drastic action wouldn’t be enough to save the career of either man”. The prime minister may fire the chancellor “in a shameless attempt to pin the taxes and looming recession entirely” on Sunak, but “such a cynical ploy wouldn’t by itself rescue the PM”, writes Heath. “Virtually every decision” Johnson has taken since 2019 “has conspired to undermine” the “historic achievement” of delivering “a clean Brexit”. Britain faces “major, historic challenges” that require “bold and imaginative solutions” – sacking Sunak “won’t answer these epic questions, as even Boris Johnson must surely realise”.

Read more

2. The infuriating reason why Fox News won’t broadcast the January 6 hearings live

Noah Berlatsky in The Independent

on channel choices

There is “an expected dynamic to political scandals”, writes Noah Berlatsky in the Independent. “Politician does bad thing, politician tries to cover it up, news media tries to expose the story” is how it used to go. But “thanks to the increasing dominance of hyper-partisan right-wing media”, they often now take a “different trajectory”. Now, “when conservative politicians do something horrible, Fox News” and other “like-minded imitators don’t try to expose the truth. They rush to cover it up.” Most networks are providing live, continuous coverage of the 6 January insurrection hearings “because it is a major, important news event”. But Fox News “is taking a different route”, instead broadcasting them on Fox Business, a much smaller channel than its flagship. “This is hardly the first time Fox has tried to mislead its viewers about the insurrection,” says Berlatsky. “Fox barely pretends to engage in journalism” and now “it is attempting to keep evidence of Republican complicity in the insurrection from its viewers”.

Read more

3. Isn’t it frightening that a lone woman seeing a policeman now feels afraid, not reassured?

Zoe Williams in The Guardian

on rising fear

The Metropolitan Police is pressing its case against six people who attended the vigil for Sarah Everard in March last year. “At every turn, the force’s behaviour has been the exact opposite of what it should have been,” writes Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Any killing by the police “changes policing for ever, and changes the experience of being a police officer”. It is “impossible to overstate how damaging it is that a woman on her own, seeing a policeman, would be more likely to feel afraid than reassured”. Williams thinks that “the Met’s approach was too often similar to that of the Vatican when allegations of sex offences were first made against priests: circle the wagons, protect the insiders, wait for it to pass”. If a women’s citizen army were to spontaneously mass, “the Met needs to hear it… How can you show that you’re listening if you won’t acknowledge people's anger?”

Read more

4. China’s smart cities have gone from utopia to dystopia

Frédéric Lemaître in Le Monde

on padlocking down

“Is it a coincidence” that Shanghai was named “the world’s smartest city” in February just as it became “the world’s largest prison”? writes Frédéric Lemaître in Le Monde, with 25 million people “strictly confined to their homes”. It may be “too early to draw up a balance sheet of this great – probably unprecedented – lockdown”, but the toll “has been much more dramatic than authorities have claimed”. The “illusion of a ‘dynamic’ management of zero Covid” has, says the French paper’s Beijing correspondent, “failed miserably”. At the end of March “Shanghai authorities were reduced to the most ancient of solutions: forcing the population to stay at home by putting good old padlocks on the doors of their residences”. In attempting to curb the spread of the virus, “China’s smart cities have been moving from utopia to dystopia”.

Read more

5. Is the #MeToo movement dying?

Spencer Bokat-Lindell in The New York Times

on limited potential?

“If there is a standard metric by which the progress of the #MeToo movement has been measured, it is the conviction of high-profile men accused by women and girls of sex crimes,” writes Spencer Bokat-Lindell in The New York Times. It’s “small wonder, then” that the legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard “has been read as a low-water mark for the movement”. Even before the verdict last week, “commentators were declaring ‘the death’ and ‘the end’ of #MeToo”. Some say the movement “hasn’t actually done much to curtail sexual harassment and abuse”, and social media conversation around the trial “could indicate that the court of public opinion is also becoming less friendly to accusers”. But “Was #MeToo’s potential limited from the start?” Some have pointed to the movement’s “overreliance on punishment” to produce “social change for all women, not just the most well-off ones like many a Hollywood actress”, as a significant “flaw”.

Read more

Police forces across the UK are reportedly preparing for a wave of civil unrest sparked by the cost-of-living crisis.

According to a “senior source”, chief constables and policing organisations are “sharing intelligence about potential disorder” in the coming months, and assessing how forces nationwide could “bolster their numbers during major incidents”, The Times reported.

The source said there was no “specific intelligence” about disorder, but added: “We know historically that where the economy suffers, acquisitive crime goes up and there is more potential for unrest.”

Martin Lewis has also predicted that violence may break out unless the government takes urgent action, after annual inflation hit a 40-year high of 9% last month. The MoneySavingExpert founder told ITV’s Robert Peston last week that the public mood was “desperate, it’s angry... if we don’t sort this... I worry about civil unrest”.

Violence has already erupted in some other countries, including Sri Lanka, as populations are pushed to the brink by the global economic crunch. Here are five historic uprisings triggered by rising prices.

1. England riots, 1981

Thatcher-era Britain “exploded with rage” in the summer of 1981, in the wake of a UK recession, with civil unrest and clashes with police in Brixton in London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Nottingham, as well as other smaller urban areas, between the months of April and July, said Politics.co.uk.

As the “polarising” first phase of Thatcherism took effect, government-supported factories and industries closed, leading to a rapid increase in unemployment. In Toxteth in Liverpool, for example, male unemployment rose to 40% by 1981, “which was quadruple the national average of approximately 10%”. Meanwhile, unemployment rates were “more like 80% for black youths” according to community activists.

Racial tensions and allegations of police discrimination were also major factors in many of the riots, with policing tactics used in inner-city areas that saw young black people “disproportionately targeted and harassed”, said the news site.

2. Chilean protests, 2019

More recently, Chile was gripped by protests and unrest in the “worst violence the country had witnessed since the 17-year-long military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which ended in 1990”, said Al-Jazeera.

Initially beginning in October 2019 as a student-led protest over rising transport costs in Santiago after the government announced that rush-hour prices would rise by 30 pesos ($0.04), the protests soon spread across the country as millions expressed their anger over “the increasing cost of living, low wages and pensions, a lack of education rights, a poor public health system and crippling inequality”, said the news site.

At least 26 people died during the unrest, said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), while a further 28,000 people were jailed, “many arbitrarily”, while some 350 people sustained injuries to their eyes due to the use of less than lethal weapons by police.

3. Yellow vests protests, 2018

A populist French movement named after the fluorescent yellow jackets worn by its participants, the group Gilets Jaunes held 52 weeks of consecutive protests calling for the government to take measures tackling “economic hardship” and “mounting inequality”, said France 24.

Made up of financially insecure urban and rural workers from across France, the protests were first triggered in November 2018 by an unpopular fuel tax, “ostensibly designed to finance France’s transition to a green economy”, which “infuriated motorists in rural and suburban areas starved of public transport,” said the news site.

Frédéric Gonthier, a political scientist at the Pacte research centre and the School of Political Studies in Grenoble, described the movement as a “watershed in French politics”. It forced Emmanuel Macron’s government into “billions of euros of tax breaks”, said France 24, and “put neglected swathes of the country back on the map”.

4. The Arab Spring, 2010

Food scarcity and rising costs also led to the series of anti-government protests in the Middle East in the early 2010s which would become known as the Arab Spring.

Droughts and fires in Australia and floods in the US between 2009 and 2011 led to a significant drop in exports from those countries, contributing to inflation in high-export countries in the Middle East.

“Shrinking farmlands, bad weather, and poor water allocation” in Middle Eastern nations also contributed to higher food prices, said PBS, ultimately contributing to anti-government sentiment that would spread across swathes of the Arab world.

5. Russian Revolution, 1917

Although there were a number of economic and political factors that lead to the acute crisis that precipitated the Russian revolution, it was ultimately “a shortage of food in St Petersburg and persistent bread queues in the city” that triggered the so-called February Revolution of 1917, which would lead to the overthrow of the monarch and the end of Tsarist Russia, wrote Andrei Markevich, a professor at the New Economic School, for Vox EU.

On 8 March 1917, demonstrators “clamouring for bread” took to the streets in the Russian capital of Petrograd, now St Petersburg, where they clashed with police and soldiers, said HistoryExtra. The demonstrators were supported by some 90,000 men and women on strike, and the revolution ultimately “triumphed” when “regiment after regiment of the Petrograd garrison defected to the cause of the demonstrators”.

It led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of autocratic rule in Russia and the beginning of the Russian Revolution.

The scope of Sadiq Khan’s powers as London mayor is under scrutiny after Priti Patel ordered an independent review of his role in the hiring and firing of Metropolitan Police commissioners.

The Times reported that the review will be headed by Tom Winsor, the recently retired chief inspector of constabulary. The move follows the “ousting” of Met chief Cressida Dick in February, after Khan withdrew his support for her amid “racism, misogyny and misconduct scandals” in the force.

Patel was said to have been “blindsided” by the Labour mayor’s withdrawal of confidence “only a few months” after Dick was awarded a two-year extension to her contract, the paper continued. The home secretary will choose Dick’s successor but is “legally required to take Khan’s opinion into account”.

In a further clash over Khan’s powers, Policing Minister Kit Malthouse has told the mayor to end his “baffling” support for legalising cannabis and focus on knife crime in the capital instead.

What is Khan’s role as mayor?

Khan “sets the budget and is responsible for making London a better place for everyone who visits, lives or works in the city”, according to the London Assembly website. The former Labour MP for Tooting “has a duty to create plans and policies for the capital”, covering issues ranging from arts and culture to housing, transport and policing.

According to Police UK, Kahn “is responsible for setting policing and crime priorities for London”. As mayor, he “will hold the Met Police commissioner to account and work with partners to ensure that crimes goes down and criminal justice outcomes are improved”.

The Telegraph reported in February that Patel was planning a shake-up of legislation to prevent police and crime commissioners (PCC) from dismissing chief constables, including Met commissioners, “for political or personal reasons”. Khan is the equivalent of a PCC for London, so “does have the power to effectively dismiss the commissioner and suspend them if the Metropolitan Police Authority wants to remove or force them to retire”, said the paper.

Khan can also influence policing in the capital in other ways, although he doesn’t have the power to change specific legislation.

Following through on a key manifesto pledge in his mayoral campaign last year, Khan has appointed former justice secretary Charlie Falconer to lead a London Drugs Commission that “will examine the potential benefits of legalising cannabis” in London, This is Local London reported.

While the mayor cannot legalise cannabis, he can “provide recommendations on any potential model” for drug reform in the capital, and is likely to “focus on existing solutions that can be implemented without Home Office approval”, said Politics.co.uk.

Khan is backing a pilot scheme in which young people aged 18 to 24 found with “small” amounts of cannabis in the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley are to be offered speeding-course-style classes or counselling instead of arrest.

The project is being spearheaded by Damien Egan, the mayor of Lewisham, but may be funded by the mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), after “similar pre-custody ‘diversion schemes’ for drug users” were found to work successfully in other parts of the country, the London Evening Standard reported.

Could Khan’s powers be reduced?

According to The Times, a terms of reference for the independent review ordered by Patel asks Winsor to “provide the home secretary with advice, options and recommendations on how accountability and due process in these respects may be strengthened”.

The review will look at whether the mayor’s role should be “diminished” in order to “reduce the impact of politics”, said the paper, and “whether changes could be made so that a withdrawal of mayoral confidence would not necessarily result in a commissioner’s resignation”.

Reducing Khan’s powers would require new legislation, and would be likely to “anger City Hall, given that his role is to hold the Met to account and requires a close working relationship with its leadership”.

But, added The Times, “it is possible, though considered much less likely”, that Winsor could recommend that the mayor “be given more powers, to skew the balance in his favour”.

The Metropolitan Police is in the spotlight again following the news that officers strip-searched a black 15-year-old girl without an appropriate adult present, leaving her deeply traumatised.

The teenager, known only as Child Q, was pulled out of an exam she was sitting at her school in Hackney, east London, after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis. Two female officers forced her to remove her sanitary pad and expose her intimate body parts.

After finding no drugs, they asked her to go back into the exam “without any teacher asking her about how she felt knowing what she had just gone through”, said her mother during an interview. She wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom to clean herself and had to reapply the same dirty sanitary pad to her underwear.

The law on strip searches

The government says that a police officer can only stop and search someone if they have “reasonable grounds” to suspect that person is carrying illegal drugs, a weapon, stolen property or something that could be used to commit a crime.

An officer can ask the person in question to take off their coat, jacket or gloves or anything they are wearing for religious reasons, “for example a veil or turban”. The latter must be done out of public view. If the officer wants the person to remove “more than a jacket and gloves”, then they must be the same sex as the person under suspicion.

A strip-search can only be conducted if an officer has a specific reason to search further and this must take place in a private area, such as a police station. It can only be carried out by an officer of the same sex, without anyone of the opposite sex present, and there must be at least two people in the room other than the detainee, “except in cases of urgency”.

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence (Pace) Act 1984, an “intimate search” – a physical examination rather than visual – should only be carried out by a registered medical practitioner or registered nurse, “unless an officer of at least inspector rank considers this is not practicable”. If that is the case, having a non-medical professional conduct a strip-search “must only be considered as a last resort”, the code states.

The rules for children

Children aged 17 and under need to have an appropriate adult present if they are to be strip-searched, except in urgent cases where there is risk of harm or if a juvenile has specifically stated that they don’t want an appropriate adult there. However, this decision must be recorded and signed by an appropriate adult.

The City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP), which covers the area where Child Q was searched, states that 25 children under the age of 18 were subjected to “further searches” by officers between 2020 and 2021 – “further searches” meaning strip-searches. Of the 25 children, 19 were male and handcuffed during the process.

Nothing was found during 22 (88%) of the searches and 20 (80%) had an outcome of “no further action recorded”. In terms of ethnicity, 15 (60%) of the children searched were black, two were white, six were Asian and two were Arab or North African.

In 2016, the BBC reported that more than 5,000 children in England and Wales had been strip-searched between 2013 and 2015, and that more than 4,000 of those searches had been carried out by the Met Police.

The BBC asked all 45 police forces in the UK for their strip-search figures, but just 13 responded with the information.

‘From happy go lucky to timid recluse’

In the damning report by the CHSCP, Child Q’s maternal aunt said she had seen her niece change “from a happy go lucky girl to a timid recluse that hardly speaks to me”. She also said that the girl is “now self-harming and requires therapy”.

The teenager said she felt so negatively impacted by the incident, which took place in late 2020, that she has wanted “to scream, shout, cry or just give up” every day since.

The report found that racism “whether deliberate or not” was “likely” to have played a part in the officers’ decision to undertake the strip search. Writing for The Guardian, Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said the incident showed that “black schoolgirls are not safe from police abuse, even at school, supposedly a place of safety”.

According to The Guardian, three Met officers were placed under investigation by the police watchdog over the incident in 2020, but remain on full duties.

‘Should never have happened’

The Met has apologised and said the strip search “should never have happened”, while Hackney Council’s mayor and deputy mayor have requested a report “in six to nine months” on progress made following the findings of the report, said the BBC.

This apology comes just two months after the Met Police publicly apologised for the verbal abuse of an academic during a strip search almost a decade ago that she claims left her with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The force admitted that officers used “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” about Dr Konstancja Duff following her arrest for obstruction in May 2013. Duff said she had “intrusive thoughts about the strip search [which] often brought on panic attacks” for months afterwards.

Detectives investigating a string of alleged parties in Downing Street will begin contacting the people involved by the end of this week, the Metropolitan Police has said.

The force has launched Operation Hillman to get to the bottom of claims that the lawmakers and staff who helped set the nationwide Covid-19 rules were breaching them behind closed doors.

Officers will be sending “formal questionnaires” to more than 50 people, mostly via email, said Scotland Yard in a statement last night.

The dates

The Met is looking into 12 incidents on eight dates between May 2020 and April 2021, which have also come under scrutiny by civil servant Sue Gray in an internal government investigation. She released her initial findings at the end of last month but noted that she was “extremely limited” in what she could say due to the parallel police probe.

• 20 May 2020: Downing Street staff were allegedly invited to a “bring your own booze” gathering in the garden of No. 10.
• 18 June 2020: A gathering in the Cabinet Office was said to be held to mark the departure of a Downing Street private secretary.
• 19 June 2020: Boris Johnson’s birthday. ITV News claimed that an event took place in the Cabinet Room with cake and “a chorus of Happy Birthday”.
• 13 November 2020: Dominic Cummings resigned from his post as Johnson’s top aide. There were said to be two subsequent gatherings in No. 10 and in Johnson’s flat.
• 17 December 2020: Gray looked at three separate gatherings on this date: a Cabinet Office “online Christmas quiz” and two other events to mark the departures of two officials.
• 18 December 2020: This event was described in the Gray report as “a gathering in No 10 Downing Street ahead of the Christmas break”.
• 14 January 2021: An event at the start of last year was said to have been held in No. 10 as two private secretaries departed.
• 16 April 2021: Two more gatherings were reported in No. 10 as two officials left.

The Telegraph added that the latest police statement came as a new image emerged, “showing Mr Johnson attending a virtual Christmas quiz with an open bottle of Champagne nearby” on 15 December 2020. The Met has said it will now review its initial decision not to investigate that event, which was included in the Gray report.

As more and more party allegations have been drip fed to the press, Johnson has repeatedly insisted that “all guidance was followed”. Although he offered a “heartfelt apology” in the House of Commons for attending the No. 10 garden gathering on 20 May 2020, he claimed he believed “implicitly” it was a work event.

The evidence

The questionnaires going out to more than 50 people will ask for “an account and explanation of the recipient’s participation” related to specific events, said the police. The document will have “formal legal status and must be answered truthfully”, added the force. Recipients will have seven days to respond, with the Met insisting it is “progressing the investigation at pace”.

Detectives on the force’s Special Enquiry Team are examining more than 500 documents and 300 images provided by the Cabinet Office, but said they will be requesting further information. They may also need to contact more people in the “coming days and weeks” if they are named as having potentially breached regulations.

The consequences

Announcing the investigation last month, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick explained that the police were looking at “summary only offences”, meaning those found to have breached the rules would get a fixed penalty notice (FPN). “I should stress that the fact that the Met is now investigating does not mean that FPNs will necessarily be issued in every instance and to every person involved,” she added.

The Times noted that FPNs for attending a large gathering are £100, doubling to £200 if not paid within 14 days, but they are much higher for the organisers. “Boris Johnson could ultimately be fined more than £12,000 if he is found to have breached his own coronavirus laws, because the size of fixed penalty notices increases with each offence,” calculated the paper. It added that at least half of the 12 events under investigation were “either attended by Johnson or are linked to him”.

A search is underway for Cressida Dick’s successor after she stood down last night as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police amid mounting tension with Sadiq Khan

Dick resigned the £230,000 a year role after the mayor of London accused her of failing to deal with a culture of misogyny and racism within the force.

She told reporters she was left with “no choice” but to step aside after Khan made it clear that he had no confidence in her leadership. The announcement came after the mayor said public trust in the Met had been “shattered” by recent scandals.

No way back

Khan had demanded a plan from the police commissioner on how the force would “win back the trust and confidence” of the public prior to her resignation.

He said he was “disgusted and angry” about the litany of police failings that has come to light in recent months, and was therefore prepared to “take action” against Dick unless she offered a convincing plan to restore the public’s “knocked and shattered” confidence.

His intervention came after a probe into the behaviour of 14 police officers based in Charing Cross uncovered a series of messages, sent between 2016 and 2018, where officers joked about rape and made homophobic, racist and misogynistic comments.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct branded the messages as “disgraceful” and made 15 recommendations on how the culture within the Met can be overhauled. It also warned the actions were “not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Khan said he had told Dick to produce a “response to the examples not of one officer [but] 14 officers being involved in racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and the like behaviour”. He also said he had asked to see what “her plans are to win back the trust and confidence” of the public and that his support for Dick had been “contingent upon the response”.

‘A series of scandals’

Khan he repeatedly questioned whether the culture of the force had “fostered a series of scandals”, said The Guardian.

Recent scandals include two officers taking photographs at the scene where two sisters lay murdered in a northwest London park, as well as the Metropolitan Police’s leadership’s mishandling of the Sarah Everard case, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serving police officer.

At the time, Dick said she recognised that “a precious bond of trust has been damaged” between the public and the police, and she would ensure that lessons were learned from the case.

She faced pressure to resign then, and several “high-profile” figures wrote an open letter accusing her of “presiding over a culture of incompetence and cover-up”, said the BBC.

In the weeks following Everard’s murder, a YouGov survey for the End Violence Against Women coalition found 47% of women and 40% of men reported declining trust in the police.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said at the time that “serious questions” needed to be answered by Scotland Yard, but ultimately backed Dick, whose contract as the head of London’s police force had been extended by another two years that month.

More recently, an Ipsos-Mori poll suggested that public trust in the police has been further eroded by their handling of lockdown-busting parties held in Downing Street, with fewer than a third of Britons confident that the investigation will be “independent or lead to disciplinary action”.

The Met’s “foot-dragging reluctance to investigate” now looks like a “catastrophic misjudgment”, said The Guardian’s columnist Gaby Hinsliff, who suggested that distrust of the police had now gone “mainstream”.

Efforts to improve policing

Louisa Rolfe, an assistant commissioner at the Met, told the Financial Times in December that Everard’s murder was “a watershed moment” for the police, after which Dick launched a “wholesale review of culture and standards” of the force.

Other limited efforts to improve policing in other parts of the country have seen some success through the use of “evidence-based policing” where new methods “backed by data” are applied to police work, said the paper.

Avon and Somerset Police have taken part in a Home Office backed trial of of “pulse patrols”, where officers “embark on 15-minute foot patrols of places that generate the highest number of calls about crime at the busiest times”. Targeted areas have seen a 13% fall in street violence compared with previous years.

Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police commander who now advises Khan, said culture change was needed to rebuild trust in the force.

“It’s about getting the culture of the organisation to change, understanding [public] confidence, engaging with the community and working more effectively in terms of partnerships,” he told the paper. “It’s not rocket science.”

Life after Dick

A Home Office source told The Times there are “no suitable candidates” to replace Dick and that the search for her replacement could therefore take some time.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu was seen as a favourite, but has clashed with Priti Patel and Boris Johnson over the issue of race, prompting the source to state that “No. 10 would block Basu even if we wanted him, which we don’t”.

Home Secretary Patel is also “said to be unimpressed with the UK’s other police leaders, several of whom she clashed with over the Black Lives Matter protests”, the paper added. But she “might favour” Shaun Sawyer, the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall.

A Home Office source said that an interim commissioner could be brought in while a full application process was undertaken. Politico’s London Playbook said there are a number of “runners and riders” in the frame.

Stephen House, the deputy commissioner, is an “obvious candidate”. Mark Rowley, former assistant commissioner for specialist operations, is also seen as “something of a reformer”, having recently criticised the Met’s over-reliance on stop and search.

Andy Cooke, former Merseyside Police chief “cut his teeth jailing dozens of millionaire drug kingpins in Liverpool” and has fans in government circles. And Essex police chief B.J. Harrington has won rave reviews in the county, but did himself “few favours” last summer when he criticised Patel over the freeze in police pay.

1. Munira Mirza’s resignation suggests the game is up for Boris Johnson

John Rentoul in The Independent

on an ailing premiership

“She may be unknown to most voters, but Munira Mirza’s resignation yesterday was the breaking of another pit-prop under Boris Johnson’s creaking premiership,” writes chief political commentator John Rentoul for The Independent. Although Johnson tried to make it look as if her exit was part of the No. 10 clear-out promised by the PM in the wake of the partygate scandal, in reality “her departure was different”. Conservative MPs could now feel that Mirza’s letter of resignation – which cited her anger over Johnson’s false claims that Keir Starmer in his role as director of public prosecutions had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile – has “weakened their bonds” of loyalty towards the prime minister, and some could now send in letters of no confidence. Her departure also “suggests that some people in No 10 think it’s all over”, Rentoul writes. “I am sure that Mirza’s anger about the Savile slur is genuine, but it is also true that if you want another job, it might be better to get out now on a point of principle than to hope for a place on the last helicopter out of Saigon.”

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2. As the scandals keep coming, distrust of the police has gone mainstream

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian

on Met misjudgments

“An Ipsos-Mori poll this week found that fewer than a third of Britons are confident that the police investigation of alleged lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street will actually result in anyone who broke Covid rules getting punished, while considerably fewer than half expect the police to be thorough or independent,” writes columnist Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. “The Metropolitan police’s strange, foot-dragging reluctance to investigate, at least until shamed into it by a Whitehall inquiry, now looks like a catastrophic misjudgment,” she continues. “But it wouldn’t have been so damaging had it not reinforced a more longstanding sense that something has gone very wrong in British policing,” she continued. “This is a dangerous moment for decent officers trying to do a good job in thankless circumstances, including female officers horrified by some male colleagues’ behaviour who may have felt forced to ‘play the game or stay quiet’,” she writes. “Given this government’s proven tendency to ignore constitutional niceties, it may also be a dangerous moment for the perennially delicate balance between police operational independence and political meddling.”

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3. The Baftas’ disdain for British brilliance feels like self-sabotage

Tim Robey in The Telegraph

on home-grown talent

“The Baftas have certainly embraced all things boutique, alternative and grungy this year,” writes film critic Tim Robey in The Telegraph, but they have missed an opportunity to “wave the flag for UK film production”. While in some years “resisting that urge might in fact look commendable, for fear of looking too parochial or boosterish”, this year “it feels an awful lot like self-sabotage. Amid acting nominations that range from the terrific and surprising to the dreary and obvious, two big British stars have also been left out” – namely, Olivia Colman for her turn in The Lost Daughter, and Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick… Boom! “Many would argue the great achievement” of cinema this year “has been to stop cinema going under,” he continues. And the Baftas could at least acknowledge one major “home grown triumph” in this department by showing “a bit more respect” to British-made blockbuster No Time to Die.

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4. Putin’s grand plan is failing

Ian Birrell for UnHerd

on an own goal

“Admirers and appeasers of [Vladimir] Putin – who can be found across the political spectrum – often repeat a well-worn cliché that he plays chess while his foes play chequers,” writes Ian Birrell for UnHerd. “But is Putin really such a grandmaster on the geo-political chessboard?” After two weeks of reporting in Ukraine, what has been made “abundantly clear” to Birrell is in fact “the failure of this supposed Machiavellian mastermind, whose goal of rebuilding Russia’s empire and shattering Nato lies in tatters”. It is clear that “despite Putin’s efforts to blame the West for meddling in Ukraine”, in reality his “belligerence and toxic intervention” has only “hastened” Ukraine’s move towards Europe.

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5. Three steps Queen Elizabeth should take after 70 years on Britain’s throne

Autumn Brewington in The Washington Post

on royal reforms

The Queen has every right to “celebrate her record-breaking 70 years on the throne”, writes Autumn Brewington in The Washington Post. “But with the broader royal family in a far less sterling state, this latest milestone is an opportunity to do more than take a victory lap.” The Platinum Jubilee is the ideal moment to settle three questions. “First, specify what a future, ‘slimmed-down’ royal family looks like,” she suggests. “Second, announce whether Camilla will be crowned queen.” Waiting until Charles becomes king would lead to an unseemly debate during a period of national mourning – and in any case, Brewington says, the Queen “is the only royal who can make this change without a potentially debilitating public outcry”. Finally, “she could suggest a limit to how long any person reigns – perhaps to ensure that the crown changes hands at least once every generation. That could help the institution stay relevant.”

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1. A desperate new low for the disgraced Met Police

Daily Mail Comment

on ‘abhorrent’ attitudes

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick has offered a “tin-eared defence of the constabulary”, said the Daily Mail. “A force the size of Scotland Yard would invariably employ the ‘occasional bad ’un’”. Yet anyone who is today reading the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s “damning report into the toxic culture at the Met might draw a strikingly different conclusion”. “Far from a few rotten apples, Dame Cressida has a whole barrel”. The report exposes “shocking evidence of a profoundly sick force”, including “disturbing texts between serving officers” that have been “passed off as ‘banter’”. For members of the police force to hold such attitudes is “abhorrent. Yet only two culprits have been sacked.” The report trains “an intense spotlight on ingrained dysfunctionality” within the force “that is at best tolerated, at worst swept under the carpet”. This “dangerously corrodes” the public’s trust in the police, and “their leaders face tough questions for failing to eradicate the vile microclimate” that persists. “It is hard to think of a public servant who has failed so consistently and comprehensively as Dame Cressida.” Before her detectives investigate partygate, “shouldn’t she get her own rackety house in order?”, asks the newspaper.

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2. Addressing poverty means financial education in primary schools

Robert Halfon at the Financial Times

on money lessons

“The first weeks of the year are viewed by many as some of the toughest,” says Robert Halfon at the Financial Times: “but this year, things are even worse.” The cost-of-living crisis should give “pause to consider long-term solutions for families’ financial instability”, says the Conservative MP: “that is, not just ensuring people have enough money in their pockets but making sure people have the skills to manage their income to maximum benefit”. Halfon says “reforming financial education is at the heart of this.” He believes too many adults “lack the basic skills which underpin financial capability”. And while the Chancellor’s announcement of a £560m adult numeracy programme last year “has the potential to be truly life changing”, “the truth is we have to start earlier”. People who leave school “without an effective financial education are at high risk of financial abuse, fraud and debt”. The financial marketplace is evolving “at an electrifying pace”, says Halfon, and “financial education must recognise that the TikTok generation faces altogether different challenges to those armed with a cheque book years ago.”

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3. Scottish Tories can’t rely on Boris Johnson to set a good example but can’t defect to Labour either

John McLellan at The Scotsman

on staying put

“Representing the Conservative Party these days”, as John McLellan does, “means there is little middle ground”. Writing at The Scotsman, the Tory councillor says those “at the sharp end” of the unfolding Westminster drama “just have to get on with it”. The “blunders, U-turns, accusations and bad headlines” are now “so frequent that they are losing their currency”. The Scottish Conservative Party “is the only solid opposition to the SNP and independence”, however, “so we can’t indulge ourselves by stropping out like the traitorous MP Christian Wakeford”. The party would “of course” be in a better position if Johnson “behaved like a statesman and set an example of which to be proud”, but then, “he wouldn’t be Boris Johnson”. Like Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot, Scottish Conservatives “can only wait”. Unlike Becket’s characters “and unlike Wakeford, we do not move”.

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4. Blaming Carrie Johnson for No. 10 mess is deeply unfair

Alice Thomson at The Times

on reputational disarray

Ever since Anne Boleyn entered Henry VIII’s court, “she has been blamed for leading her husband astray”, says Alice Thomson at The Times. “Half a millennium later nothing much has changed.” Now, it’s a different court, and Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie “is taking the rap for her man’s actions”. She is “accused of causing havoc”, says Thomson, and her personality “is being cited to excuse many of the prime minister’s most egregious mistakes”. The “most serious charge” against the prime minister’s wife is “that she forced” the government to save cats and dogs from Kabul “rather than airlift desperate Afghans fleeing from the Taliban”. Then there’s “Carrie Antoinette’s scrolling fern wallpaper”, and the claim that she “‘ambushed’ him with a cake” at a surprise birthday party. But ultimately the Downing Street “mess” is Boris’s “responsibility, no one else’s; he causes chaos”. And yet if he’s “ousted”, “he will return to a well-paid column and the lucrative lecture circuit”, while “it’s Carrie who will have lost her reputation”.

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5. Rihanna’s pregnancy announcement was tongue-in-cheek perfection

Clemence Michallon at The Independent

on mastering a new art

Clemence Michallon wasn’t surprised “when Rihanna nailed her pregnancy announcement”. Writing at The Independent, she notes that the Barbadian singer “tends to excel at, well, practically, everything she undertakes”. Over the weekend, she “offered us a masterclass in that most modern of genres, the celebrity pregnancy announcement”. Rihanna “stepped outside in an eye-catching pink winter coat, which she kept open to reveal her bare pregnancy bump overlaid by a large, jewelled cross necklace” next to her partner, A$AP Rocky. That the New York backdrop was “blanketed in snow” only made the feat “all the more impressive”. Such announcements are a “rich genre” of “Hollywood history”, and Rihanna’s announcement “picks up where her celebrity peers left off”. It’s “traditional” in that “it relies on a bump photo – understandably a favourite medium” of the genre. It’s “staged at just the right amount”, and achieves “the perfect mix of controlled aesthetics and casual cool”. The announcement is “deliciously casual in the most tongue-in-cheek manner”, particularly given Rihanna “was the subject of unfounded pregnancy rumours for years”. “Congratulations,” says Michallon.

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Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Global Player

In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Religious tolerance

Reports from the UAE suggest that school textbooks are shifting to promote tolerance towards Jews. They still don't all put Israel on the map, but it is a big step in the direction of acceptance, according to the authors of a recent study. It coincides with a report in The Economist suggesting that “the Arab world is re-embracing its Jews”, having largely sidelined and rejected their Jewish populations since the creation of Israel. Will Israel soon be back on the map in the Arab world – and could this help to heal some of the Middle East’s wounds?

Waiting to transition

The treatment of trans people is back in the news this week on multiple fronts, as the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission called on Scotland to delay plans for reform of its approach to gender recognition and the Council of Europe raised the alarm about “extensive and often virulent attacks” on trans people across the continent. And a crowdsourcing campaign by a trans woman in Worthing has drawn attention to the length of NHS waiting times for gender-confirming surgery, which can be more than three years.

Police misogyny

The Metropolitan Police have this week apologised to a female academic who they admit was subjected to “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” when she was strip-searched after being arrested while giving a legal advice leaflet to a 15-year-old who had been stopped and searched. For years, police had denied any impropriety, but CCTV footage of the incident confirmed that she had been taunted about body hair and a “rank” smell as officers restrained her and cut off her clothes with scissors. What does this tell us about police attitudes towards women?

The Metropolitan Police has publicly apologised for the verbal abuse of an academic during a strip search almost a decade ago that she claims left her with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The force admitted that officers used “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” about Dr Konstancja Duff following her arrest for obstruction in May 2013. Duff, now an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, was detained after trying to hand a “know your rights” legal advice card to a black teenager caught in a stop-and-search sweep.

Duff, then 24, was taken to Stoke Newington Police Station in north London, where she was carried to a cell and bound before three female officers cut off her clothes with scissors and ripped out her ear piercings.

‘Three officers on top of me’

Duff has described how she was stripped completely naked, despite police guidelines stating that suspects should not be required to remove all of their clothes at the same time. She said that the officers “grabbed” her breasts and touched her genitals, claiming they were looking for genital piercings.

“It was three officers on top of me but it felt like it was more because they were kneeling on me with their full weight and they were all over me,” she told the BBC in 2018.

In comments caught on CCTV footage following the strip search, a male officer inspecting Duff’s possessions in the station reception asked: “Sorry, sorry, what’s that smell?” Another male officer replied: “Oh, it’s her knickers, yeah?”

“Is she rank?” asked a female officer. “She is, her clothes stink,” a male officer answered.

The video footage – published by The Guardian this week – also showed Sgt Kurtis Howard, who was in charge of the station custody area, telling officers to demonstrate to Duff that her “resistance is futile”, to search her “by any means necessary” and to “treat her like a terrorist”.

“It was really clear that they were trying to humiliate me,” Duff, who only gained access to the footage last year, told BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour on Tuesday. “It was really dehumanising language… it does give a kind of peephole into a culture of misogyny and immaturity.”

Injuries and derailed degree

Duff was a final-year master’s student in piano performance at the Royal College of Music when she was arrested, but “says her injuries meant she could not practise for her recital and had to postpone the completion of the master’s until the following year”, said the BBC.

These injuries reportedly included cuts and bruises on her arms, a 5in cut on her collarbone and ear pain where a piercing was removed. Duff said she also suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had “intrusive thoughts about the strip search [which] often brought on panic attacks” for months afterwards.

Duff was later charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer and one charge of obstructing a police officer, but was acquitted of all charges following a trial. However, the police watchdog (then known as the Independent Police Complaints Commission, or IPCC) did not uphold her complaint of wrongful arrest.

Legal battle begins

Following her acquittal, Duff made a formal complaint about her treatment. But it was only when she sought a judicial review against the IPCC’s decision that custody sergeant Howard was put before a disciplinary panel.

Howard faced a misconduct hearing in August 2018 over alleged breaches of the Met’s standards of “professional behaviour in respect of authority, respect and courtesy, orders and instructions, and discreditable conduct”, Metro reported at the time.

But he was cleared of gross misconduct by the panel without having to give evidence. Halfway through the hearing, the panel decided that he had no case to answer.

Misconduct hearing ‘sham’

Following the verdict, Duff told The Guardian that she had stood up at the hearing and accused the panel of “endorsing the commonplace use of repressive and violating tactics like strip searching to punish and intimidate anyone who does not simply go along with being treated unjustly by police”.

Duff told the BBC that the misconduct hearing was a “sham”, adding: “I feel we are dealing with a real culture of impunity that needs to be challenged.”

The Met said in a statement to the broadcaster that Howard had “made several attempts to respectfully engage with the complainant, all of which were caught on CCTV”, and that he had “reasonable grounds” to authorise the strip search.

Civil claim settled

Duff made a civil claim against the force, which was paid for through crowdfunding. “The costs of a civil action against the police are prohibitive,” she wrote in an article published this week on left-wing site Novara Media. “In my case, the insurance payments alone required a crowdfund to raise £7,560.”

Duff said that the claim was settled by the Met in October 2021, and that “I received £6,000 in compensation and an apology”. But “I don’t believe a word of it”, she added.

After the claim was concluded, allegations of misconduct relating to the officers’ comments were referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards – the body responsible for investigating complaints against the professional conduct of police officers.

The Met also made a voluntary referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the watchdog that has replaced the IPCC.

CCTV footage revealed

The Met apologised to Duff once again this week after The Guardian published clips from the CCTV footage, which was acquired by Duff last year as part of her civil action.

In a statement to Duff, Inspector Andy O'Donnell of the Directorate of Professional Standards said he “sincerely and unreservedly” apologised “for the sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language used about yourself and for any upset and distress this may have caused”.

He added: “I hope that settlement of this claim and this recognition of the impact of what happened that day will enable you to put this incident behind you.”

Duff said it was “really striking” that the Met had apologised only for the language used by the officers. “They apologised because they got called out for using embarrassing language, but they didn’t apologise for violently stripping me naked,” she told Women’s Hour.

“At every stage, they have used false accusations to discredit me,” she said, adding: “I just feel like I’ve been on trial for eight years.”

The publication of the CCTV footage followed what The Times’ crime correspondent John Simpson described as “a string of scandals for the Met”. High-profile cases including the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving firearms officer, and the gross misconduct of two officers who shared photos of two murdered sisters, have highlighted “deep-seated cultural problems” in the force, Simpson wrote.

A Met investigation into Duff’s allegations of misconduct is ongoing.

The Metropolitan Police is considering an investigation into the alleged “BYOB” party that took place at No. 10 during the first lockdown, it has emerged.

According to an email leaked to ITV, more than 100 Downing Street staff were invited to the event by Boris Johnson’s principal secretary, Martin Reynolds. The PM admitted to attending the garden party during Prime Minister’s Questions today, claiming that he believed it was a work event.

A Met Police spokesperson said the force is “aware of widespread reporting relating to alleged breaches of the Health Protection Regulations at Downing Street”, adding that it is currently “in contact with the Cabinet Office”.

If Johnson is found to have breached the law by attending the outdoor gathering, he will join a list of MPs to have found themselves under police investigation. Here is a rundown of some of the other politicians who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

1. Jabez Spencer Balfour

A Liberal MP for Tamworth from 1880 to 1885 and Burnley from 1889 to 1893, Balfour was perhaps the most infamous fraudster politician of his era.

A “late Victorian financial and property tycoon” he “amassed a fortune by exploiting the religious devotion and the temperance crusades of that era,” said HistoryToday.

In 1892 he was at the centre of a scandal when the Liberator Building Society, which he set up and controlled, failed, leaving thousands of small investors penniless. He fled to Argentina, but was extradited before being tried and imprisoned for 14 years.

2. Jeremy Thorpe

John Jeremy Thorpe served as a member of parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979 and was the leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976. “Dashing” and “charismatic”, he was perhaps Britain’s “most popular politician” in the early 1970s, The Sun said.

In 1979, he found himself at the centre of “the trial of the century” when he was accused of conspiring to murder his former gay lover, Norman Scott, in what the BBC described as a “bizarre, ill-fated plot”.

Thorpe was acquitted, but the trial ended his once-glittering parliamentary career. “Lurid speculation about what really happened and why dogged him for the rest of his life,” said The Guardian in 2018.

3. Jeffrey Archer

The millionaire author and former Conservative politician was accused by the News of The World in 1986 of paying a prostitute £2,000.

Then deputy chair of the Conservative Party, having been appointed by Margaret Thatcher in 1985, he resigned from his post soon after the story broke.

In 2001 Archer was sentenced to an additional four years in prison after being found guilty of lying during a 1987 libel case he brought against the Daily Star after allegations he paid a prostitute for sex. Archer was found guilty on two counts of perverting the course of justice, and two counts of perjury.

Before his sentencing, the judge presiding over the case said the “charges represent as serious an offence of perjury as I have had experience of and have been able to find in the books”, reported the BBC at the time.

4. Jonathan Aitken

The Conservative MP “dramatically resigned from his post” in 1995 after The Guardian and Granada TV’s World in Action revealed that “a Saudi businessman had paid for a stay at the Paris Ritz hotel – in breach of ministerial rules,” reported the BBC at the time.

Aitken launched a failed libel action against The Guardian and Granada, claiming he had quit his ministerial post to fight what he said was “the cancer of bent and twisted journalism”.

But the case collapsed and Aitken admitted lying during the libel case. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice and was jailed for 18 months, seven of which he served as a custodial sentence.

5. The expenses scandal

The 2009 expenses scandal eventually saw five MPs and two peers jailed as a result of police investigation into false expenses claims.

As Channel 4 reported, the jailing of so many MPs led to the “startling statistic" that in 2011, while “0.13 per cent of the general population was in jail, a shocking 0.61 per cent of House of Commons members were in prison”.

Ex-Labour MP David Chaytor was jailed for 18 months for fraudulently claiming more than £18,000, Labour’s Jim Devine was jailed for 16 months for claiming more than £8,000 and former Labour environment minister Elliot Morley was jailed for claiming £31,000.

Eric Illsley, also formerly of the Labour Party, was sentenced to 12 months for falsely claiming £14,000, while former Labour minister Denis MacShane was jailed for six months after falsely claiming £12,900.

Conservative peer John Taylor was sentenced to 12 months after claiming more than £11,000, while Paul White was given a nine-month sentence, returning to the House of Lords after being acquitted and repaying the £3,300 he wrongly claimed.

6. Keith Vaz

In 2016, Labour MP Keith Vaz came under police investigation over charges he “offered to buy cocaine for two male escorts”, reported The Guardian.

The Metropolitan Police opened its investigation into whether Vaz had broken any drug laws after it received a complaint from Tory MP Andrew Bridgen. The investigation was eventually closed and Vaz did not face charges.

7. Fiona Onasanya

In 2019, Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was sentenced to three months in prison after it was found she had lied to police in relation to a speeding ticket.

She had been expelled from the Labour Party after being convicted of perverting the course of justice in 2018.

However, she remained an MP until her conviction, earning her the dubious honour of becoming “the first sitting member of parliament in nearly three decades to be jailed”, reported the BBC.

1. If the Met police are serious about rebuilding trust after Sarah Everard, they should actually talk to women

Parm Sandhu for the i newspaper

on taking swift action

The horrifying murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a police officer “leaves me with the most awful feelings of anger and deep upset”, writes Parm Sandhu, a former chief superintendent in the Metropolitan Police. It’s important to remember that the vast majority of officers are “good people” who are “also struggling to come to terms with the actions of the monster who killed her”. What has concerned many is the force’s “failure to identify [Wayne Couzens] as the risk he was”, she says, as well as “the various stories from serving and ex-officers of their experience of misogyny and sexual harassment from other officers”. The police need to show they are taking swift action to address such issues, writes Sandhu, who served in the Met Police for 30 years. We need to see action fast, she adds, as “the time now is desperately short to regain the trust and confidence of women in the police”.

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2. Breaking promises won’t get Keir Starmer into power

Owen Jones for The Guardian

on a leader whose time is up

“Dishonesty corrodes democracy like acid,” writes Owen Jones. However, it is not the “broken promises of Boris Johnson” that are on The Guardian columnist’s mind this time, but those of his opposite number. Jones rages that “Starmer stood for Labour leader under a banner of Corbynism without Corbyn” but has now discarded that promise. He dismisses Starmer’s conference speech as “Blairism without Blair” but says comparisons with Blair’s leadership are nonetheless “wrongheaded” because the “architects of New Labour” were “genuinely substantial figures”. Furthermore, he argues, “where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth”. He notes that Starmer is “less popular than a prime minister presiding over a country with fuel shortages, empty supermarket shelves, and an impending cut to universal credit that will drive hundreds of thousands of children into poverty”. It is too late for the Labour leader to win Jones over. “He needs to be removed,” Jones says.

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3. Thank God furlough has ended. Now give businesses the freedom to employ

Annabel Denham for The Daily Telegraph

on becoming ‘risk allergic’

At one point, close to nine million people were on the furlough scheme, making it “one of the largest interventions that the UK government has launched in any crisis, ever”, writes Annabel Denham in The Daily Telegraph. Few disagree that the decision to nationalise the workforce “was the right medicine in the pandemonium of March 2020”, she says. “But as the months wore on, it became harder and harder to justify.” The longer workers were furloughed, the more we became “risk allergic” to jobs being lost; “we ignored that jobs disappear all the time, even without pandemics”. When furlough eventually winds up, there will “regrettably” be an increase in unemployment – but “this will likely be less than was once feared”. “Protecting jobs was core to Rishi Sunak’s pandemic strategy,” Denham concludes, but “it’s not a job the government can do forever”.

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4. Hire ex-offenders to help society and the economy

John Timpson for The Times

on the upside of ex-cons

John Timpson welcomes news that Dominic Raab is encouraging bosses to employ ex-prisoners because “if this represents a permanent shift in attitude it will significantly reduce the number of prisoners who reoffend and will cut the vast cost of our prosecution and prison service”. Writing for The Times, Timpson, whose shoe-repair and key-cutting chain started recruiting ex-offenders 20 years ago, points out that more than 60% of prison leavers reoffend within two years of release, a figure that falls to under 20% for those with a job. “We use the same criteria as for all other applicants: we pick them on their personality,” he writes, adding: “Drug dealers are often successful: they are very commercial!” He calls for more employers to follow his lead. “Ex-offenders can only get a job with most companies if they lie on their application form,” he says, but “if employers think ex-cons can help with the current crisis, and beyond, they should scrap for good their insistence on a clean criminal record”.

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5. Britney Spears’ bid for freedom comes at a crucial moment

Nicole Hemmer for CNN

on the right to body autonomy

A judge’s decision this week to remove Britney Spears’ father, Jamie, from the decades-long conservatorship that has controlled nearly everything – from her movements to her healthcare decisions – has brought the pop star “a step closer to regaining her freedom”, writes Nicole Hemmer on CNN. But this move “isn’t the end of the conservatorship” and even ending it “will not make Britney Spears whole”, she adds. For more than ten years, Spears has been denied “the most personal of all freedoms: the freedom to choose to have children”. Sadly she’s not alone. “Women in the United States do not have, and have never had, full reproductive autonomy,” Hemmer says. “Spears’s struggle helps highlight the moral catastrophe of those limitations, especially at a moment when women’s reproductive rights are under renewed attack.” The attention being paid to Spears’ conservatorship case “is happening at a crucial moment”: “seeing a woman being freed from the control of her father, and slowly regaining full autonomy over her own life and body, is a reminder of why all women deserve the right to control their lives as well”.

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Matt Hancock has been suspended as a Tory MP after reports emerged that he is to appear in the next series of reality TV show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

The former health secretary has been looking for ways to rehabilitate his political career after he was forced to step down last summer for breaching lockdown rules by conducting an affair with his aide Gina Coladangelo.

Hancock had planned to stand for chairman of the Treasury select committee, “one of the most prominent backbench positions in parliament”, according to The Times. But he pulled out of the contest when the number of people backing him for the role “just wasn’t large enough”, said Guido Fawkes.

Now, having been very publicly snubbed by new prime minister Rishi Sunak last week, “the man who screwed up Britain’s pandemic response then got caught breaking his own social distancing rules while simultaneously cheating on his wife – has decided to serve his penance on ITV”, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian.

While he has had the Tory whip removed, a political ally of Hancock’s defended his decision to appear on the show, telling The Telegraph: “I’m A Celeb is the most watched show on TV. Matt doesn’t expect to serve in Government again, so it’s an incredible opportunity for him to engage with the 12 million Brits who tune in every single night.”

The ally said he would use the show to promote his dyslexia campaign and had agreed with producers he could communicate with his constituency team if urgent matters arose while he was in the Australian jungle.

The news has, nevertheless, “sparked a backlash” in Westminster and beyond, said Sky News, while members of his local Conservative Association are “less than pleased about his decision to fly to Australia to appear on the show”.

Andy Drummond, the deputy chairman of West Suffolk Conservative Association, told the PA news agency: “I'm looking forward to him eating a kangaroo’s penis. You can quote me [on] that.”

“Hancock might have been advised that he’s simply following in the footsteps of his colleagues,” said Heritage in The Guardian, citing former cabinet colleagues Nadine Dorries, who appeared on I’m A Celebrity in 2012, and Penny Mordaunt, who took part in the celebrity diving show Splash in 2014.

“But in truth, nobody really knew them back then. They were political minnows looking to elbow their way into the spotlight,” Heritage said. “That’s not Hancock, though. He enters the jungle a known quantity. Everyone in the country is fully aware of him, of his damp-mouthed, sadsack persona, and of all the things he has done. People died on his watch, and now they finally have a chance to get their own back.”

A highly decorated police officer who was sacked after being sent a WhatsApp message featuring a child abuse video has been reinstated after a tribunal ruled her dismissal “unreasonable” and “unfair”.

A former acting chief superintendent, Novlett Robyn Williams was sentenced in November 2019 to 200 hours of community service for possession of an indecent image and was then sacked by the Metropolitan Police in March 2020 after a disciplinary hearing ruled that she had committed “gross misconduct”.

But in a Police Appeals Tribunal hearing on Wednesday, an independent panel concluded her dismissal was “unfair” and that it was “unreasonable” to sack Williams after her conviction, adding that she should have received a final warning instead.

‘Grave error of judgement’

Jurors at her trial heard Williams had been sent the video by her sister, Jennifer Hodge, who was “outraged” that it was circulating on social media and sent it to “all 17 people in her WhatsApp contacts list”, The Guardian reported in 2019.

Williams said she was “unaware” her sister, who wanted the culprit found, had sent her the video. However, the judge presiding over the trial rejected the explanation given Hodge’s “extreme reaction” to the video and because the two sisters “had spent hours with each other” without Williams reporting it, the paper adds.

Prosecutors also cited a text from the officer to her sister to “please call” as evidence that she wanted to discuss the content of the video, the BBC says.

Judge Richard Marks said Williams’ decision to do nothing about the video was “a grave error of judgement” given her duty to safeguard the five-year-old child involved, adding: “It is a complete tragedy you find yourself in the position you now do.”

‘Institutional racism’

Before her dismissal, Williams was a “rising star” in the Met Police and had been “tipped to become the first black head of Scotland Yard”, the Daily Mail reports.

Her sacking caused “widespread anger” among her colleagues, who pointed to her “unblemished” 36-year career record, The Telegraph says. She was highly decorated for her work, winning the Queen’s Police Medal in 2003 and receiving high praise for her role after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.

The Black Police Association (BPA) was highly critical of her conviction, arguing in 2019 that it was a “classic example of institutional racism” and questioning why she was pursued when an “investigation concluded that there has been no sexual gratification” from the images, The Guardian says.

“The clip was sent to 17 people and only three people were convicted,” the Met branch of the BPA said in a statement. “It is well documented about the disproportionally that exists within misconduct and complaint of officers and staff from an African, Caribbean or Asian background.”

The Metropolitan Police denied that ethnicity was a factor in its decision to press for charges, arguing that dealing with the allegations internally would have been “entirely wrong”, The Times reported.

Back to work

After the appeal verdict Williams, 56, said: “I am extremely pleased with today’s outcome and would like to thank the members of the panel for their decision, Gerard Boyle QC for continually fighting my case, and for the countless people within policing and beyond, including representatives of the Police Superintendents’ Association, who have supported me throughout,” Sky News reports.

“For over a year, before and during the pandemic, I have continued to support local people by working within community initiatives. I am therefore delighted to be able to return to the work I love, serving our communities within London.”

Police Superintendents’ Association professional standards coordinator Victor Marshall said: “We are pleased that today’s panel agreed that her dismissal was unreasonable in light of the complex circumstances surrounding her conviction and we are delighted she will be able to continue to serve the communities of London.”

A Met Police spokesperson added that it will “await the full judgment” and “engage Ms Williams’ representatives accordingly”.