Policing Plebgate

Now here's something you don't see every day, a former Labour MP and government minister - Chris Mullin - commenting on the treatment of a politician from a rival party without, but seeking to exploit the situation or turn it to his party's advantage.

Instead, Chris Mullin deals honestly with the underlying issues which suggest that police corruption has been at work - aided and abetted sections of the press - ironically at a time when standards of behaviour amongst the press were under scrutiny by the Leveson Inquiry.

Yet the usual suspects amongst the newspapers queued up to 'monster' Andrew Mitchell and drive him from office with even the leader of the Labour opposition - Ed Miliband - joining in at Prime Minister's Questions - when he gleefully declared Mitchell to be 'toast'.

So, I take my hat off to Chris Mullin - if only more of our politicians behaved with principle and integrity, the country would be a much better place.   

The long arm of Plebgate

The never-ending police inquiry into the treatment of Andrew Mitchell should be of concern to all democrats

By Chris Mullin

Andrew Mitchell resigned as Tory chief whip a month after the Plebgate affair broke. 'It is not in the public interest that the police should be allowed to reshuffle the government on the basis of evidence of which some is clearly fabricated.' Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

This week sees the first anniversary of "Plebgate", the extraordinary series of events that brought down the Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchellafter an altercation with an officer of the diplomatic protection squad on duty at the entrance to Downing Street.

It seemed as though Mitchell was bang to rights. He admitted using bad language and swiftly apologised to the officer concerned, who accepted his apology. That ought to have been the end of the matter, but for the intervention of the Sun, which next day splashed the headline "Cabinet minister: police are plebs" across its front page. To make matters worse the incident occurred the day after two police officers had been gunned down in Manchester, a point the Sun managed to work into its story.

The apparent use of the word "plebs" was toxic. Mitchell vehemently denied saying it, but immediately the Police Federation was demanding his head. A feeding frenzy followed. After a month under siege, he resigned.

It soon became apparent, however, that there was more to this story. When the security tapes were eventually disgorged from the Downing Street cameras, they showed that, contrary to what was asserted in the police log, the incident was not witnessed by sightseers. What's more, an investigation by Channel 4's Michael Crick concluded that a damning email sent by a constituent to the deputy chief whip, John Randall, was fabricated. The author, who turned out to be a member of the diplomatic protection squad, claimed to have witnessed the incident in the company of a number of tourists who, he asserted, were "visibly shocked". But, as the security tape disclosed, he wasn't there.

Alarm bells began to ring. Bernard Hogan Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, cut short his Christmas holiday to appear before the home affairs committee. Hogan Howe, who from the outset had been unwisely professing his complete confidence in his officers' version of events, now promised "a ruthless search for the truth". Operation Alice was set up, involving 30 police officers who were to leave no stone unturned. The issues they had to resolve were simple enough. Why did the Downing Street log suggest that the incident had been witnessed by members of the public when it hadn't? Who contacted the Sun within hours of the incident taking place? Who leaked the contents of the log to the Daily Telegraph? And, above all, who put Randall's constituent up to apparently claiming he had witnessed the incident when he hadn't?

Nine months on, the outcome of this "ruthless search for the truth" is still awaited. A number of officers and one civilian are reported to have been arrested, but as yet there is no sign of any charges. We will, of course, never know precisely what was said by Mitchell in his exchange with the officers. All one can say is that what has since come to light undermines the credibility of the police witnesses and adds weight to Mitchell's version of events.

There will of course be those who ask why all this should be any concern to those of us who are not Tories. Why, they may argue, intrude on private grief? In my view, however, there are wider issues at stake that ought to be of interest to all democrats. First, it is not in the public interest that the police should be allowed to reshuffle the government on the basis of evidence of which some is clearly fabricated.

Second, as one of my Tory neighbours remarked: "If the police will go to these lengths to fit up a Tory cabinet minister, imagine what they could do to a black boy late one night in the back streets of Manchester." Finally, somewhere at the back of all this lies the Police Federation, a mighty vested interest with a long track record of defending the indefensible. It is high time it got its comeuppance.