(Because that’s what the story is about)
It wasn’t so much what he said – after all the effing being ignored or even accepted as something that is said to police officers up and down the country on any given weekend, but rather it is about a Minister of HM Government “disrespecting” the police, seeming to believe – or as the police would now like us to believe – that he was in some way superior (swearing at a police officer on duty being an offence worthy of arrest, so surely no need to embellish his comments?). This coming just a day after having lost two officers in a brutal manner and facing previously unheard of cuts to police numbers.
With the tragic circumstances of the killing of two officers and the ensuing collective grief, Mr Mitchell found himself in the eye of a perfect political storm (and out in the cold), being battered by the infuriated (and according to some politicos, inflated) Police Federation, unable to seek succour from his quaking Parliamentary colleagues, or the slippery machinations of Big Dave whose inaction encouraged Mr Mitchell to fall on his sword.
What we at The Guff find interesting is how, after years of miscarriages of justice, deaths in police custody, and the death of a newspaper vendor in contentious circumstances to name but one, it has taken the resignation of a white middle-aged, public school educated, Oxbridge upper class gent for the Establishment to be shocked by revelations that in some cases the police may sometimes be less honest than they make out. Surely defending a wrong is tantamount to doing wrong?
It is thus a combination of the we do no wrong attitude of the Police Federation and the weak political will of the three main political parties why we find the tax payer picking up the £300,000 tab (cost so far) for what can only be described as an argument by neighbours over “the garden gate”.
