We find ourselves in the dreadful position that both those running the country and those in charge of our largest police force are accused of misusing their positions (Sue Gray report: redacted version is imminent, say government sources, 28 January).
On top of a series of scandals – including the Sarah Everard murder, the mishandling of the vigil on Clapham Common, and accusations of institutional corruption – the speculation about the Metropolitan police’s recent decisions over the Sue Gray report are potentially devastating. It is unclear why the police initially refused to become involved, only then at the last moment to intervene, and to intervene in a way that seems destined to affect the political process.
Important though these questions are, however, they are almost beside the point. The belief that the police are in some way colluding in a whitewash is now sufficiently widespread for the integrity of the institution to be at very grave risk. The police cannot operate effectively without trust and, once lost, it is very difficult to rebuild. Melodramatic it may sound, but we are fast approaching the point where the very future of the Metropolitan police in its current form is at stake.
Prof Tim Newburn
London School of Economics
• Jonathan Freedland’s article (We don’t need Sue Gray’s report to tell us that Britain is run by a liar, 28 January) made me wish for one thing: that Sue Gray wakes up this morning and decides that enough is enough; that she walks into the Guardian offices, puts her full “partygate” report on to the reception desk and says: “I’ve had enough of people being denied the truth, of individuals dicking about and putting themselves above the people of this country, so please go ahead and publish it, because people deserve the truth for once.”
If Sue Gray did this, she would become the one person we feel we can trust, because we most certainly don’t trust the government, or the police, not only to admit the lies, but also to deal with them.
Penny Shadbolt
London
• The Liberal Democrats, with their suggestion of a “stitch up between the Met leadership and Number 10”, are misrepresenting the real issue. Essentially, the House of Commons has chosen to use the report to establish the facts as a basis for reaching a decision on whether Boris Johnson has knowingly misled the house and should offer to resign. It is legitimate for the legislature to ask the police, who have initiated a judicial process, not to get in the way of this, which is far more important than the question of whether there were infringements of Covid-19 regulations, carrying at most a penalty-notice fine.
Alan Bailey
London
• Politics has always been the subject of satire, but the fact that Joe Lycett’s tweeted parody Sue Gray report caused “chaos” and “mass panic” in government surely illustrates what many of us have believed for a long time: we are governed by people who can no longer tell truth from fiction as they have themselves become the joke (Joe Lycett says Sue Gray report stunt motivated by anger over friend’s death, 28 January).
Jackie Epps
Alton, Hampshire
• Boris Johnson dismisses email evidence of his involvement in the decision to assist the evacuation of animals from Kabul as “total rhubarb” (Report, 29 January). The early rhubarb on my allotment plot is just sprouting. I wonder if Johnson will still be prime minister by the time it is ready to pick?
William Wallace
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
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