They thought the West Midlands police scandal was all over…it wasn’t

I can’t help wondering if police and politicians all over the UK heaved a collective sigh of relief on January 16, when the West Midlands Police Chief Craig Guildford – finally and apparently reluctantly – resigned following the Home Secretary’s no-confidence declaration in the wake of Sir Andy Cooke’s report into WMP’s decision to ban Israeli fans from last November’s Maccabi Tel Aviv-Aston Villa fixture.

As far as the Jewish community and most decent-minded people were concerned, Mr Guildford’s resignation was the correct outcome to this disgraceful episode.

As Labour PCC Simon Foster said, Mr Guildford had “acted in the best interests of West Midlands Police” by resigning, and it certainly appeared to bring a fitting end to the scandal that had engulfed WMP.

But while I do realize it sounds a tad conspiracy-adjacent to ask, I will ask anyway: Did the resignation serve – if entirely accidentally –the interests of the UK’s second largest police force and of police and politicians in the West Midlands and Whitehall while failing to serve the interests of all UK citizens?

The row, for those unfamiliar with the details, centered on a decision by WMP to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, allegedly for “safety” reasons. WMP claimed that it had made the decision based on “intelligence” but the shambolic “evidence” presented at the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that convened on December 1st, suggested that at least some of it was introduced retrospectively when WMP was coming under fire and trying desperately to justify its decision to ban Israeli fans.

For example, one piece of “intelligence” related to a “fixture” between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham that was never played, while further “evidence” cited by WMP included a “report” from Dutch Police allegedly warning of “risks” posed by Maccabi’s traveling supporters. This was utterly demolished by the mayor of Amsterdam who wrote to MPs investigating WMP to state that such claims were “nonsensical” and did not match the published accounts of the fixture in 2024, when Jewish and Israeli fans were attacked by Muslims who, according to texts recovered from assailants’ phones, had been urged to go on a “Jew hunt.”

Evidence also emerged that before taking their decision, WMP were allegedly consulting with extremist Islamist groups and local politicians known to be hostile to Israel. It also emerged that Islamist groups were planning to attack the Israeli fans. But WMP appeared to ignore these threats of violence to Israelis and, instead, doubled down on their claim that the Israelis were “the problem”. As the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a joint statement, it seemed that the WMP “reached a decision first, and then “searched for evidence to justify it.”

Other factors in the row include the fact that Steve Foster, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) since 2021 whom the Daily Mail described as “the only man with the power to sack the West Midlands Police chief” was the former chair of the South Birmingham branch of the Labour party’s hard–left faction Momentum which devotedly supported Jeremy Corbyn.

By mid–December, WMP was hosing blood

As an indication of just how badly the PR War was going for Britain’s second-largest police force – based in Britain’s Second City – here are just a few of the headlines that appeared in the weeks prior to Mr Guildford’s resignation: “Mosque helped appoint police chief who banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”; “Police chief ‘capitulated to Islamists over Maccabi Tel Aviv match’”; “Police commissioner in Israeli fan row offered mosque ‘blank cheque’”; “Officers gagged from speaking about West Midlands police chief”; “Leaked edict forbids staff from discussing Craig Guildford”; “Plot to attack Maccabi fans ‘should have been treated as hate crime’”;  “West Midlands police had intelligence that local residents were arming themselves and preparing to seek out and attack Israelis at Villa Park in November”; “Police have ‘systemic problem’ with standing up to Muslim extremism”; “I told West Midlands not to reappoint chief constable”; and my absolute favourite, from The Sunday  Times, “Mr Plod v the Maccabi fans, a perfect TV tragi–comedy.”

By mid–December, WMP was hosing blood.

And then, came the resignation. It cauterized the wound. The bleeding was stymied. Miraculously, the possibility just melted away of further investigation that may have been more rigorous/damaging/embarrassing and could – according to some legal experts – have involved a criminal court case if charges of misconduct in public office had been brought under Section 26 of the UK Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

Mr Guildford, who was close to retirement and would keep his pension, had indeed acted “in the best interests of West Midlands Police,” as Steve Foster had said.

The shameful episode appeared to be over. But it was not over.

While the resignation had cauterized the wound and just as it looked as if the patient would hobble back to Birmingham, bloody and bowed but alive to ban Israeli fans – or ignore threats to them – another day, the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) put an end to conspiratorial theorizing and speculation by announcing that its “interest in the actions” of the former chief constable “and other officers” had not ended with “Mr Guildford’s decision to step down.”

The IOPC had – declared its director-general Rachel Watson – been “examining a wealth of evidence” and had also requested “additional material” from another police oversight body, HMICFRS (His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary).

Setting aside my paranoid and probably delusional speculation regarding Mr Guildford’s departure, it is a relief to know that the IOPC is not content to let a resignation derail a thorough investigation which may reveal that neither banal “confirmation bias” nor eye–watering incompetence adequately explain WMP’s actions with regard to the ban on Israeli fans.