A row over the dramatic ousting of Dame Cressida Dick broke out on Friday amid anger from Home Secretary Priti Patel at being blindsided by Mayor Sadiq Khan on the Met Police Commissioner’s fate.
Sources said Ms Patel, who had intended to leave Dame Cressida in post to begin reforming her force, was dismayed at being left with a void at the top of Scotland Yard that risks further instability and hindering efforts to drive through change. But City Hall stood firm, with Mr Khan said to be convinced that he had achieved the right outcome after the succession of scandals that had battered the Met’s reputation and dented public confidence in the force.
The rift came as Ms Patel promised to replace Dame Cressida with a Commissioner who can tackle the “stark and sobering” challenges the force faces and bring the “strong and decisive leadership required to restore public confidence in the largest police force in the country”.
Ms Patel added: “The public in London and across the entire country must once again have the confidence to trust the integrity and professionalism of the police officers who serve them.”
Writing in the Evening Standard, she continued: “Policing culture, conduct, attitudes and behaviours have rightly all come under scrutiny and... a new leader must tackle these institutional issues that have brought great shame on elements of policing.”
A Home Office source also raised questions about the fairness of the manner in which Dame Cressida’s resignation had been engineered, but said Ms Patel wanted to work with Mr Khan in choosing a successor.
“What we’re wanting to avoid is the Americanisation of policing where it all becomes very political. That seems to be what City Hall wants.”
An interim appointment is expected at the outset to allow time for a proper recruitment process. The decision on who to hire will be taken by Ms Patel in consultation with Mr Khan with the final choice subject to approval by the Queen. The focus on Friday, however, was on the recriminations over Dame Cressida’s departure, which came just 24 hours after Mr Khan had savaged her performance during a BBC interview in which he warned that she had only “days or weeks” to save her job.
Mr Khan said that to do so Dame Cressida would have to produce a plan to convince him that she could restore the trust of Londoners in her force in the wake of scandals ranging from the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens to the botched timing of the partygate investigation and last week’s revelations about officers at Charing Cross police station joking about rape, the Holocaust and killing black children.
He promised to follow “due process” but had already seen a blueprint sent to him last Friday by the Commissioner and made clear to her on Thursday that he was not satisfied with it, prompting Dame Cressida to offer her resignation. The tumultuous turn of events and Mr Khan’s decision to effectively force Dame Cressida’s hand within hours of his earlier indication that she still had time to save her job caught the Home Office by surprise with sources saying pointedly that it was better for public officials to work together when handling such a sensitive matter.
City Hall hit back, however, by denying that Mr Khan had been “rude and unprofessional” to the Home Secretary or the Queen by failing to inform them of Dame Cressida’s decision.
A spokeswoman for Mr Khan said it was right that Dame Cressida was given the chance to inform the Home Secretary herself, rather than having her decision communicated by City Hall. “This is the culmination of two years of scandal,” a source added. “It’s not just one isolated incident. He had come to the end of the road. It was week after week. The trust and confidence of Londoners was shattered.”
It was Dame Cressida’s “inadequate” response to the report into the racist, misogynistic and other abusive misconduct at Charing Cross police station by officers that caused Mr Khan’s “patience to snap” and decide that he no longer had confidence in her leadership. “Change had been promised,” a source said. “It hadn’t been delivered.”
Mr Khan and Dame Cressida did not speak directly at any stage on Thursday and instead conducted negotiations through officials.
The Standard has been told that the Mayor’s staff and the Commissioner’s staff had been in communication for “days” after Dame Cressida submitted her plans last Friday to root out bad officers and restore trust in the Met.
The face-to-face meeting that had been due to take place yesterday at 4.30pm had been scheduled for a couple of days. But Dame Cressida chose not to attend and instead offered her resignation mid-afternoon after it was made clear to her, via her officials, that her plan “wasn’t sufficient”.
