Pleb Gate

[Jan Klimkowski]

"Plebgate" is now a political football, with various parties attempting to take political advantage of the former Chief Whip's foul-mouthed bullying, which is itself not disputed.

The use of the word "pleb" is disputed, but not that Mitchell swore at the cops nor it seems that he told them that there would be consequences to their refusal to open the gate of Downing St for the Chief Whip....

Plebgate: Andrew Mitchell claims he was victim of police 'stitch-up'

Former chief whip says he was accused of using 'awful toxic language' in an attempt to destroy his political career


Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 December 2012 10.58 GMT

Andrew Mitchell says email was 'concerted attempt to toxify the Conservative party and destroy my political career'. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Andrew Mitchell has claimed he was the victim of a "vile" police "stitch-up" to destroy his political career after a confrontation with armed officers in Downing Street.

Amid growing support for Mitchell on the Tory benches, the former chief whip says he was accused of using "awful toxic language" that amounted to a lie.

Mitchell was forced to resign last October after police officers guarding No 10 accused him of calling them "fucking plebs" after they declined to allow him to cycle through the security gates.

The former chief whip admitted swearing in the presence of the officers, though he has strenuously denied having called them plebs.

In his first detailed account of the incident, Mitchell writes in the Sunday Times: "Now I have had a taste of how extraordinarily powerless an individual is when trapped between the pincers of the police on one side and the press on the other. If this can happen to a senior government minister, then what chance does a youth in Brixton or Handsworth have?"

Mitchell's intervention came as Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, broke off his Christmas holiday amid a growing crisis for the police:

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the former director of public prosecutions, accused Hogan-Howe of being "extremely foolish" after saying last week that "nothing" made him doubt the police account. "This speaks of an arrogance of power that we've seen far too much over the past 40 years," Macdonald writes in the Mail on Sunday.

Nick Herbert, who was police minister until September, warns in an Observer article of a "cancer" of wrongdoing in British policing.

In his Sunday Times article, Mitchell says he feels as if his lifelong confidence in the police has been misplaced. He says David Cameron initially gave him a sympathetic hearing when Mitchell looked him in the eye to insist he never described the officers as plebs. Mitchell had been summoned to Downing Street the day after the incident on 19 September after No 10 had been alerted by the Sun that it planned to break the story on 21 September.

He writes: "I looked him in the eye and gave him my word that I had not used the awful toxic language attributed to me. And I do not think that members of the Downing Street inner core believed that I did. The words reek of a bad caricature of what an ill-mannered 1930s upper-class lout might say. Alas, as I was to discover, for much of the media, they fitted the bill perfectly."

Mitchell says the prime minister started to doubt him when an account of the incident, supposedly written by a member of the public, was sent to John Randall, his deputy in the whips' office, on the evening of 21 September. It turned out that the email was sent by a member of the Met's diplomatic protection group.

The former chief whip writes: "Larded with detail, it gave every appearance of being designed to stand up the police log and the Sun's splash. It was completely untrue. I was devastated. This was a stitch-up. I heard about the precise wording the next Monday night."

Mitchell adds: "This vile email replete with capital letters and mis-spellings was utterly untrue. The sender is not a member of the public but a serving police officer and member of the diplomatic protection squad, and he was nowhere near Downing Street that night.

"For the next three weeks these awful phrases were hung round my neck in a concerted attempt to toxify the Conservative party and destroy my political career. I never uttered those phrases; they are completely untrue."

Cameron told Mitchell he would have to resign after he was briefed on the email. But Mitchell told him: "David, how would you feel in six weeks' time if this is exposed for the lie it is?" Cameron agreed to give Mitchell a reprieve and to ask Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, to conduct an inquiry.

Heywood reviewed the CCTV footage and decided the email was not consistent with the pictures. But he declined to review the police log, saying it was a matter for the Met.

Mitchell's supporters pointed out last week that the email was identical to the police log, which did not appear in public until it was leaked to the Daily Telegraph on 24 September, in two key areas. The email and police log both said Mitchell had described the police as "fucking plebs" and they both said "several" people outside the gates witnessed the incident.

The two claims in the police log and the email were challenged last week when Dispatches/Channel 4 News broadcast CCTV footage of the incident.

This showed that only one member of the public was standing outside the gates for any length of time during the incident. The footage also indicates that Mitchell appeared not to be speaking to anyone as he wheeled his bike from the main gates to the pedestrian side entrance in Downing Street the time he was meant to have called them "fucking plebs".

Mitchell writes that he eventually decided to resign on 19 October after it became clear he had lost the confidence of a significant section of the 2010 intake of new Tory MPs.

Leverage.

Give me leverage.

Nick Herbert is minister of state for policing and criminal justice and Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs

Britain's police must reform or lose respect and trust

As the Andrew Mitchell affair and Hillsborough report illustrate, Britain's law enforcers must be held to account

Nick Herbert
Nick Herbert
The Observer, Saturday 22 December 2012 21.00 GMT

During the two-and-a-half years I served as police minister, I was privileged to meet many fine police officers. From the brilliant detectives who solve the worst crimes, to the committed neighbourhood teams who work hard to build confidence in their communities, to the stoic response officers who deal with drunks every weekend, I never lost my admiration for the best in the thin blue line.

Attending bravery awards only reinforced my respect, while memorial services for fallen officers were always a stark reminder of the risks that police officers take. None of this, however, clouded my conviction that the police service was in need of reform, a belief that has only been strengthened by recent events.

We haven't yet got to the bottom of the Mitchell affair and it is important that the Met and the IPCC do so as soon as possible. The idea that serving police officers might have conspired to bring down a cabinet minister could hardly be more serious. But the truth is that while corruption may not be endemic, neither is it an aberration.

Last month, five Kent detectives were arrested amid allegations that crime figures had been manipulated. In September, the Hillsborough Independent Panel found that South Yorkshire police had rewritten officers' accounts of the disaster, removing and amending material that they found unhelpful to their case.

The public reaction to the panel's verdict might have been sharper were it not for the awful killing of two women police officers that followed. Those events also heightened the pressure on Mitchell. And when he unwisely swore at a police officer, the temptation for those who were lobbying against reforms to police pay proved too great.

Anyone who doubts what was behind Mitchell's downfall need only read the blog of Inspector Gadget. A serving police officer, the self-promoted Gadget (he is not an inspector) says: "The relationship between Conservatives and police officers is not just toxic, it is over." Feelings about the reform of pay and conditions were so strong "there was bound to be trouble. Plebgate is trouble".

If the admission that Mitchell's hounding out of office was caused by resentment over police reform were not bad enough, the next lines are breathtaking: "The officer who said he was outside the gates off duty when he wasn't is a smokescreen." To the rest of us, the idea that a serving police officer might have fabricated an account is shocking, but Gadget sees nothing wrong.

Here, in one silly blog, is the epitome of the problem. Gadget and his followers can't see that the government's action on pensions and pay freezes is driven by economic necessity, applying across the whole public sector, and affecting many with far lower salaries than police officers. And their belief that they are victims "under attack" apparently justifies even the breaking of the law they are sworn to uphold, at least if politicians are the target.

I don't believe that extreme action is condoned by the decent majority of police officers. I know from personal experience that there are good people in the Police Federation itself who legitimately stick up for their members' interests. And while reforms to outdated pay and conditions are objectively justifiable, there is real concern among officers about the impact of the changes on their pay packets.

But the sensible majority need to understand how badly they are being let down by a hot-headed minority who have gone too far. Their rudeness to the impressively calm home secretary at the Police Federation conference did not deflect her determination to do what she believes is necessary and right, but it did damage the service in the eyes of those who watched.

There are wider lessons to be learned. The rush to judgment on McAlpine and Mitchell should make us all pause and reflect. Nor was it edifying that some newspapers refused to censure officers for leaking confidential material because of their worry that sources of juicy information might dry up. And cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood's investigation of the incident, following his green light to the flawed West Coast Mainline franchise, has raised eyebrows.

But it is the police service that above all must take stock and examine its own culture. Why is it that organisations such as the Inland Revenue, which holds sensitive tax information on prominent figures, do not leak, yet police officers, with their powers of coercion and a duty to uphold the law, think nothing of tipping off the press at the first opportunity?

Last week on Any Questions, broadcast from a Buckinghamshire village, Jonathan Dimbleby gasped as the majority of his audience indicated they were losing trust in the police. Where once minority communities seemed alone in raising doubts, middle England has found common cause.

This is not a crisis, but it is serious, and it must be addressed by police leaders. Elected police and crime commissioners must fulfil their new mandate to hold the police to account. They should review how much of their police budget is being spent to pay some Police Federation officials, serving officers who are not supporting their colleagues but are agitating politically and often inappropriately.

The new College of Policing, set up to uphold standards and guard ethics and integrity, must show that it has mettle and teeth. It could begin by addressing the concern that every year more than 200 police officers resign or retire to avoid misconduct proceedings. A public list of censured officers would at least demonstrate that justice has been done and prevent them obtaining inappropriate employment elsewhere.

The quiet professionalism that ensured the jubilee and the Olympics were kept safe advertised British policing at its best. The Hillsborough report and the weak phone-hacking investigation have shown the service at its worst. The extent of wrongdoing should not be exaggerated, but the cancer must be cut out before it spreads. The police do difficult and sometimes dangerous work. They deserve our respect for that and both sides must act to keep it