Recalcitrant police forces

Applications to be the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police closed at noon today. But thanks to the Home Office and the police, the best candidate for the job — Bill Bratton — hasn’t been allowed to even apply. The energy which was put into barring him shows just how determined the police and the Home Office are to prevent any outside talent from being brought into the police.

Number 10, though, maintains that it still wants to appoint outsiders to positions of authority in the police, even though it is now trying to claim that the commissioner of the Met was the wrong place to start this process. It was, apparently, too big a job to give to someone from outside the magic circle of chief constables.

But recruiting someone from outside the police to run the force in, say, West Mercia won’t have  the same transformative effect on law enforcement in Britain that putting Bratton in charge of the Met would have done.