That’s what the papers are saying anyway as politicians and others queue up to attack acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson who authorised the arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green and the heavy-handed search of his house (nine counter-terrorist officers at a time when there were rather more important things going on in the world).
Police also invaded the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament sits, to search Green’s office, in defiance of custom and practice dating back to the Civil War in the 1640s.
Even former home secretary David Blunkett, not known these days for his liberal leanings, described the handling of the affair as “disproportionate” and “unfortunate”, adding that we could have done with “a little less theatre.”
Indeed we could. According to one report the police had been prepared to use the services of a locksmith to break into Green’s house had his wife not been there. What if his 15-year old daughter had been home alone and frightened to answer the door?
Civil servant Chris Galley, 26, who works in home secretary Jacqui Smith’s private office, has been arrested for leaking information to Green and the police are saying that there is evidence that Green ‘induced’ him to leak. Which is a crime, apparently.
But the Mail on Sunday reports that police tried to ‘entrap’ Green into encouraging Galley (definitely a crime last time we looked) and their case wasn’t helped by hapless home secretary Jacqui Smith blustering away on Andrew Marr’s TBV show today to the effect that for her to have intervened would have been “Stalinist” (old Joe liking to keep an eye on what the NKVD was up to).
Doesn’t this rather suggest that she did know about it in advance?
But even if the police manage to stitch together a case (and the director of public prosecutions has been distancing himself from their actions too) it is surely inconceivable that Stephenson, the former favourite to succeed bungling Sir Ian Blair as Met Commissioner, can do so now.
And whoever gets the job will be inheriting a service whose reputation for judgement and proportionate response is shot to pieces.
[Image Attribution: SouthbankSteve]