Can this Kiwi copper save the Met?

Cressida Dick’s resignation earlier this year has opened up the race for the next Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.​ Mike Bush, head of the New Zealand police force for six years until 2020, has reportedly put his helmet into the ring for the top job. But does London want a police chief who was criticised for his force’s slow response to the Christchurch terror attack?

Overseeing London’s police force is also a big step up for a copper who has until now presided over a nation whose population is little more than half of London’s 32 boroughs. Bush is helped by the fact his career-capping tenure as New Zealand’s police chief appears to have been spotless. Almost. It was he that was in charge on 15 March 2019, when an anti-Muslim fanatic spent nearly an hour rampaging through the country’s second-largest city, Christchurch, massacring 51 worshippers and injuring scores of others during Friday prayers.