Cressida Dick: I consider quitting ‘every few weeks’

It’s been a pretty awful year for the Metropolitan Police. Having been forced to apologise for Wayne Couzens’ murder of Sarah Everard in July, forced to apologise for their officers taking pictures of two murdered sisters in October and forced to apologise for failing Stephen Port’s victims in November, this week the Met was forced to apologise for officers sending ‘disgraceful’ abusive messages at Charing Cross police station. And let’s not forget the Met’s cack-handed last-minute intervention into Sue Gray’s inquiry which will now drag the partygate affair for weeks to come.

In such circumstances it’s perhaps unsurprising that the scandal-ridden Met commissioner Cressida Dick sometimes thinks it’s time to pack it in. For Mr S has learned that last month, just a week before she U-turned to announce the Met would be launching a criminal investigation into the parties, Dick found time to spend around an hour talking to pupils at Westminster School, where fees cost up to £43,272 per year.