There was something that didn’t quite stack up about Dame Cressida Dick’s departure last week. The first-ever female Met Commissioner resigned a few hours after Sadiq Khan told her she’d lost his confidence, without even bothering to include the Home Secretary in the conversation.
Yet it’s Priti Patel, legally, who has the power to fire her not the London Mayor, who must just be “consulted”. So why didn’t Dame Cressida fight it? She’d only just been given a two-year extension by Patel, begrudgingly, and had repeatedly vowed to stay to clear up her deeply troubled force. Why didn’t she even appeal to the Home Secretary, who has her own vicious mutual loathe-fest with Khan, to intervene?
