Last summer, I wrote that the Government was running out of time to get a grip on the Metropolitan Police.
It obviously has even less time now than it did then. But in the wake of the Casey Review, and the scandals which provoked it, the conditions for major reform may be as good as they have ever been – and Rishi Sunak should make the most of them.
The Labour front bench, who might in other circumstances have rowed in behind the Met as part of their tough-on-crime pivot, will not do so now. Sir Keir Starmer in particular would find it very difficult to argue against the Prime Minister doing to London policing the same thing he himself oversaw in Northern Ireland, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary was reformed into Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Even Sadiq Khan, who has every reason to wish not to get lumbered with exclusive responsibility for day-to-day policing in the capital, would struggle to resist a determined push from Westminster.
Whilst the fine details would need working out, the basic shape of the overhaul is obvious: separate the Met’s responsibilities for normal policing in the capital with the various specialist and essentially national units that are currently housed within it.
Such a plan has several advantages, not least of which is clearing up the current muddled lines of democratic accountability. The current hybrid arrangements justify the Met being accountable both to the Home Secretary and the Mayor; this setup makes buck-passing easy and leads to regular clashes over questions such as who should serve as Commissioner, with each having their own mandates and priorities.
With two forces, the problem is solved. A normal London constabulary would no more need to answer directly to Westminster than any other force, and could be the responsibility of City Hall; a new, nationally-organised Security Police, embracing the various counter-terrorism, armed-response and perhaps public-order elements unique to the Met, could be overseen by the Home Office.
Two new forces also means the chance to instal two new leaderships, and two chances to deliver the sort of root-and-branch cultural reform that will always be all but impossible to achieve if politicians keep relying on the Met’s existing institutions and personnel to deliver it to themselves.
There is also potentially a substantial political dividend in making the Mayor of London exclusively responsible for normal policing. Given that the Conservatives usually lead on such issues, giving the mayoralty a substantial law-and-order function would make the case for actually electing one to City Hall easier to make.
All of this is ought to be deliverable, at least in terms of the restructure, which in most cases would mostly mean stripping various commands out of the Met and grouping them into one or more new forces – although it would obviously take longer for the effect of new structures and new leadership to make itself felt on the ground.
Such decisive action would not be a panacea. It could not be a so-called fire-and-forget reform; ministers would need to remain closely engaged with the project and with the new leadership.
And of course, whilst there is vast room for improvement it is unlikely that all of the issues which beset institutions such as the police will ever be entirely soluble.
Such positions will always attract a proportion of people whose principle interest is abusing the power they afford; others who work in dangerous and unpleasant roles cannot help but get desensitised to the horrors they face, which sometimes results in behaviour (gallows humour the least amongst it) which will always be shocking to outsiders even when it is not, as it too-often is, grotesque and criminal.
That isn’t an excuse. Indeed, it is precisely why both the maintenance of a strong, healthy internal culture and the rigorous punishment of transgressors has since classical times been recognised as being nowhere more vital than in organisations which wield so much power.
For too long, the Metropolitan Police has been failing, and successive governments has allowed it to fail. In its case the ancient question of who watches the watchmen has no clear answer, and in reality that has meant the answer is nobody.
That we may be approaching the end of this era of Conservative government is no excuse not to act – both John Major and Gordon Brown struck out on ambitious courses in their final years in office. Even if the project has to be finished by Labour, finally tackling the problem of the Met head-on should, and could yet, be a late but lasting achievement of the Sunak Government.