Boris Johnson as Nemesis? It could happen. Anxious emails are even now winging their way round London discussing the hows, wheres and who bys of the firing of this blog’s all-time favourite plod, London Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Ian Blair.
All I can say is about bloody time, whoever it is that finally wields the axe.
You’d think there’d’ve been enough to cost Blair his job already; there’s the sickening cheerleading for Tony Blair and the War On Terror, to begin with, and the pushing of authoritarian and antidemocratic laws and turning London into a miniature police state which contradictory though it seems is almost completely lawless in some areas and for some people.
Then there’s the blatant political manoeuvreings. Then there’s the two undetected bombings and then, then there’s the extrajudicial murder of the innocent electrician Jean De Menesez – though the officers responsible were promoted. Now there’s the accusations of out and out racism by one of his own closest senior officers.
So far Sir Ian has walked away from every accusation of wrongdoing. He may have been besmirched but all his powers and privileges remain intact. He remains a member in good standing of the great, good and constitutionally corrupt and retains the support of the media.
But it’s always the little things that catch you out, and an accusation of dishonest financial dealings might prove Blair’s final downfall:
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair will face questioning this week after it emerged a company owned by a close friend and skiing partner was awarded multi-million-pound police contracts.
The company, Impact Plus, first secured lucrative police technology contracts in 2002 when it was owned by Andy Miller, whose friendship with Sir Ian stretches back over the past 30 years.
A Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) spokesman said: “The MPA internal audit is aware of concerns about single tenders concerning Impact Plus and Hitachi Consulting and is currently researching the matter.” While he is not under investigation, Sir Ian is likely to face questions over the contracts when he next appears before the MPA.
The contracts at the centre of the conflict of interest claims ran between 2002 and 2008 and were worth more than £3m in total. Sir Ian, deputy commissioner in 2002, chaired the panel which handed Impact Plus an initial £150,000 consultancy contract.
Sir Ian has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the contracts and yesterday released a letter written in November 2002 to the Treasurer of the MPA stating that Impact Plus was owned and run by a friend of his. He said: “I was open and straightforward in informing both the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] and MPA about my friendship with Andy Miller prior to any contract being awarded. I strongly reject any suggestion that I have behaved inappropriately in any way and consider I have acted with absolute probity in these matters. I also wish to make it clear that former Impact Plus employee Martin Samphire, who now works for Hitachi, is not a personal friend of mine.”
No wonder the two Blairs, Ian and Tony, got on so well. They have exactly the same public service ethos. In fact Sir Ian is so closely tied into New Labour’s 11 years of corruption incompetence and callous authoritarianism as to be inextricable from it. Let them all go down together, even if it is to the Tories, (who’ll be as bad if not worse) if only for the pleasure of watching them fall.
My only complaint about Sir Ian’s potential departure is that he’ll probably go straight to a nice, comfy, fat index-linked pension. Not sure I call that nemesis at all.
