Mayor tightens grip on Met
Author: The Guardian |
The Conservatives have wrested control of Scotland Yard from the Home Office and now have its top officers working to their agenda, a senior aide to the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has told the Guardian.
Kit Malthouse, the deputy mayor for policing, has declared that he and Johnson “have our hands on the tiller” of the Metropolitan police and have an electoral mandate to influence what it does.
He asserted that the Johnson regime had “elbowed the Home Office out of the picture” and would no longer act as a rubber stamp to whatever the force proposed, insisting: “We do not want to be a passenger on the Met cruise.”
Within months of taking office last year, Johnson forced the previous police chief, Sir Ian Blair, from his post, and Malthouse made clear: “We’ve decided to be more influential.”
Blair’s removal made it clear to top officers they will be ousted if the mayor decides they have failed.
Malthouse rejected concerns that the new approach amounted to the politicisation of policing and said the London model was being studied by the Tory frontbench as a blueprint for its approach to law and order across Britain if they were to win next year’s general election.