The News Agents: Will Rishi regret running from the vote?

This is a Global Player original podcast.

As many of that opinion say, I...

I!

..of the country know...

No! No! No!

No!

We've got to explain the brilliance of what just happened there in the vote last night

on the reporting to Boris Johnson.

The person shouting, No! No! No!

Is actually going to vote yes, that Boris should be sanctioned for his behaviour,

but he is Labour's chief whip.

And unless he did that, unless he shouted no,

the vote would have been carried unanimously,

Nemcon without dissent.

And so he decided to go, no, no, no, no, no,

so that they had to be a division

and they counted the number of votes of who was in favour,

who was against, and who was abstaining.

This is a fascinating bit of arcane parliamentary procedure up close.

And you understand what Labour was doing here.

They want to, if you like, flush out exactly who is prepared to say

they do not believe that the privileges report punishing Boris Johnson was right

and they want to know how many conservatives have abstained from this vote

and you only get to know those numbers and those names if you have a vote.

So we now know that the privileges committee vote was won 354 to 7,

that's seven people who went against it.

118 conservatives did vote in favour,

and we should say they included around seven cabinet ministers

and a couple of other ministers who also report to cabinet as well.

But 225 conservatives just found that they had to be somewhere else,

doing something else, or not quite on the same page as the privileges committee

and its findings into their former prime minister.

And one of those who was so busy he just couldn't attend the Commons last night

was Rishi Sunak.

Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's Emily.

And it's John.

And later in the podcast we're going to have part two of our interview

with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.

And it's fascinating because he wants to talk about the reputation of the Met

and how you address that, why he wouldn't use the term institutional

to describe the racism, the homophobia, the misogyny within the force.

But also what success would look like for him at the end of his term?

But we're going to start in the Commons.

And yesterday was really, I'm going to say it was a day for the women in parliament.

Some of the best voices yesterday were from Penny Mordent, Theresa May,

Harriet Harman, Andrea Ledson, Thangam Debonair, Margaret Hodge.

It was the women that really carried the narrative.

And the narrative, I think, of that vote on the Privileges Committee report

was not one of parties, not one of sort of naughty behaviour during Covid

or during lockdown, even though that is important.

It was the one who talked about the misleading of parliament,

the deliberate and multiple times that Boris Johnson had misled parliament.

And actually what that starts to do to the fabric of our democracy

and to the trust that the public need to have, want to have in this great institution.

And I thought Theresa May, who is now what, four prime ministers ago,

had one of the strongest moments of the evening.

Friendship, working together, should not get in the way of doing what is right.

I commend the members of the Privileges Committee for their painstaking work

and for their dignity in the face of slurs on their integrity.

To all the members of the committee, this House should, as the leader of the House said,

say thank you for your service.

It is dignified, it is calm, it is quiet, it is sincere.

And it does not reveal that she was the one who has every reason

to feel the utmost bitterness against Boris Johnson for the way

he manifestly deposed her from her role by disagreeing with her Brexit deal

and basically making that a reason to get her out and take the job himself.

But there is one moment where you suddenly hear

that she rather enjoys revenge, a dish best served cold. Listen up.

The decision of the House on this report is important.

It is important to show the public that there is not one rule for them and another for us.

Indeed, I believe we have a greater responsibility than most

to uphold the rules and to set an example.

The decision also matters to show that Parliament is capable of dealing with members

who transgress the rules of this House.

If you like, to show the sovereignty of Parliament.

It is a brilliant line because of course the sovereignty of Parliament

was what Boris Johnson went on about during the Brexit referendum

and it shows again that sometimes a finely sharpened sushi knife

is far more effective than a blunderbuss or shotgun with pellets going off in all directions.

She was surgically precise in the blade that she used and the way she wielded it.

There was someone else, a Tory MP I have not really come across from Bassett Law

called Brendan Clark Smith, who tweeted last night,

I'm 100% against today's appalling recommendations.

I fully intended to vote against and then he goes on to explain why he's going to abstain

and you thought, well, there's principle for you.

I'm dead against.

Was he at the cricket?

I'm dead against what they're doing to Boris Johnson,

but I'm not going to play the silly games of having a division in the House of Commons.

And he thought, no, no, no, if you really passionately believe something is wrong,

then vote that way.

And it was the kind of excuses that I thought showed many MPs in such a poor light

and the heroic ones who were doing unpopular things probably,

Penny Morden on the front bench, leader of the House saying,

yeah, I am going to vote for the sanctions.

She looked really alone.

You know, she was one of the few cabinet members on that very, very deserted front bench

and I agree with you.

So it's because, you know, we were listening to a whole range of excuses about abstention

and one of the weirder ones I think came from Danny Kruger.

I was listening to on the BBC this morning who just said he didn't have confidence in the process

and you're like, OK, so you don't agree with how the privileges report came out?

No, I don't.

So did you go in and make your argument?

No, I didn't.

Did you go in and stand up and explain?

Because this is the parliament and this is about democracy

and we like listening to debate.

That's what it's all about.

No, I didn't.

Just didn't turn up, didn't vote, just abstained.

And I think we were asking questions about Rishi Sunat yesterday

and a lot of the commentary was around whether he was scared or whether he was frightened

or he didn't want to upset.

I wonder if there is something slightly more muscular to his abstention,

which is some kind of arrangement.

I don't want to say packed.

It sounds sort of Machiavellian and hardcore,

but some kind of arrangement with Boris Johnson,

within which he said, I will abstain.

You leave me alone.

I don't know that, but I'm just reading stuff.

I'm trying to read the room.

Did Boris Johnson say, I'll leave you alone for the next year

or I'll even come and support or I'll even come and campaign for you.

I can win votes for you, but don't vote in favour of this report.

And maybe Rishi Sunat is kind of thinking,

well, you know what, if I can absent myself to chat to the Swedish Prime Minister,

that gets me out of a whole lot of trouble.

There is still so much that I don't understand about what Rishi Sunat did and why.

I mean, we played on the podcast yesterday,

the clip of him talking to a Good Morning Britain reporter

where he gives the identical answer three times and just thinks,

please don't ask me again because I'm just going to repeat myself again and again.

It was the most feeble explanation.

If there is a good reason why you're abstaining, explain it.

At the moment, we don't have any explanation other than it might cause trouble

or your suggestion that there is some kind of dodgy pact being done between the two of them.

There are all sorts of things that Rishi Sunat could have done.

And this whole thing about, well, I had to give him his resignation honours

because it would be said, not everyone's had a resignation honours list.

If you wanted to really show and remember Rishi Sunat's words

on the first day he came into Downing Street about integrity and all the rest of it, professionalism,

if he really wanted to show a distinction between him and what has gone,

he would have said no to it.

And yet we've got this increasingly tawdry looking resignation honours list

with people who we've seen partying at Central Office and all the rest of it.

That just debases another bit of this nation's coinage.

I also think that there are loads of jobs in this country

in which you do not need to show leadership.

I have a job in which it is not particularly necessary for me to show leadership.

I'd follow you through the jungle.

Thank you very much.

If we were in the jungle, we'd both be in the wrong bloody place.

But I do think...

Can you imagine the two of us in a jungle?

Christ, what a nightmare.

But I do think that if you set yourself up to be a prime minister,

you kind of have to be a leader.

It's one of the few jobs that basically has it on your forehead.

Don't be a prime minister.

First of the Nolan Principles as well is that you are leadership.

Show leadership.

If you're desperate, desperate for an excuse on an abstention of a vote,

for God's sake, say you've got to wash your hair.

But don't say it's not for him to lead, right?

That's the wrong one. That's the wrong one.

I just wanted to play this from James O'Brien's phone in on LBC today

where a caller came on the line,

she is one of Rishi Sunak's voters.

I'm a constituent.

I am not a Tory member.

I have never voted Tory.

But I think if our prime minister cannot be prepared to stand up

and vote for parliamentary sovereignty and process,

how can he possibly remain our prime minister?

And also as the leader of the country,

he should be doing in his words what he thinks is right.

He thinks it's right, not to vote.

I think what has surprised me is, you know,

I often kind of think that sometimes our judgments are wrong

and we've gone too far or we haven't gone far enough or whatever.

Yesterday we were pretty critical of the fact that he hadn't explained

why he was going to abstain, apart from I don't want to show leadership,

which is a sort of complete non-explanation.

The abuse and the criticism that there has been of the prime minister

for this failure to explain why he's taken the stance that he's done

is much more extensive than I had imagined.

And I think that Downing Street,

if they thought that this would be the least worst option,

I wonder whether they're recalibrating that now in the light of the reaction to it.

Look, a few funny things are happening.

Now, today, you're hearing ministers who prefer to talk about

extortionate mortgage rates and the cost of living

and all the things that are going wrong in the country rather than dwell on this.

That's a weird state of affairs where they're saying,

oh, I thought we were going to get on to people's mortgages

and the fact that they can't actually afford to live in their houses anymore.

Okay, we can talk about that in a minute if you want to.

The other thing I think it's worth remembering

is that there is a pattern to this,

and I'm going to call it a populist pattern

because we saw it over the Trump indictment series,

that when you don't like the result of a committee inquiry

or an impeachment or a finding,

as soon as you start saying,

oh, I don't really like the way that was done,

which a lot of the conservative MPs who abstained are doing,

you are starting to tear away at the fabric of democracy.

You get the chance to say,

I don't like this idea, before the results come in, right?

If you don't think we've got the right privileges committee to begin with, say it.

If you don't think that the ethics commissioner is good enough to say it.

If you don't like the way we investigate, our MPs say it.

But don't wait for the results and then say,

oh, actually, I'm not really sure that process was the right one.

Oh, actually, I'm not really sure that they were doing a good job

because it does sound like,

I mean, apart from being incredibly childish,

just being sort of caught out and saying,

oh, I didn't mean to hit it at all.

It does sound like you cannot accept the way,

the whole working of our democratic system functions.

And I think that is quite serious.

And I think that for Rishi Sunak, it's very serious

because as I said yesterday,

I think that this could have easily been entirely about Boris Johnson

and his shortcomings and the lies and the contempt for parliament and all the rest of it.

And I think now that there are an awful lot more people

asking questions about Rishi Sunak's judgment,

and it's partly about the abstention

and it's partly about the honours list which he has nodded through.

And of course, we speak endlessly about the shadow,

the long shadow cast by Boris Johnson.

The shadow cast by Liz Truss is a lot shorter

because it was only 49 days that she was Prime Minister

in case we've never mentioned that before.

But, is she going to have an honours list?

And what is Rishi Sunak going to do about that?

Is he going to duck again and say, oh, well, they're just Liz's,

you know, the people that might have only been in Downing Street for five minutes

are going to get a CBE or an OBE

or are going to get pushed into the House of Lords?

Is that really going to happen?

Yeah, you were at the most amazing Home Secretary for five days.

One of the most stunning week-long Home Secretaries this country has ever had.

You managed to keep my diary together for three days.

Yeah.

OBE.

Super.

I do think that's the problem for Rishi Sunak,

is if he stops the Boris Johnson list from going through,

how could he possibly allow the Liz Truss list from going through,

in which case he becomes the Tory that just stops other Tory prime ministers

from getting their list through.

But I think if I was Liz Truss now, and I'm really not,

but I think if I was, I'd be thinking so hard about the honours list

because she could soar to the top of the public's esteem by just saying,

I get it.

You know, well, it didn't really work out.

I'm definitely not going to do that.

I'm going to wipe that honours list because actually it's more important

for us to restore trust and integrity and transparency and all the rest of it.

If she took that move, I'm not saying you'd instantly forget everything that happened in October,

but there would be a kind of catharsis whereby you thought,

okay, she kind of gets that and she wants that to be the start of amends.

Look, successive prime ministers have used the House of Lords

on a system to reward cronies, mates, party donors, and the like.

And, you know, if you look at the relationship between Tory treasurers

and those who become lords, I mean, it's almost 100%.

It's just phenomenal.

You know, if you give enough money, you almost get a peerage,

and that is just a disgrace.

But if you go back over history, I mean, Tony Blair created 374 life peers.

Gordon Brown, 34. David Cameron, 245. Theresa May, 43.

Now, obviously some have shuffled off this mortal coil,

but there are an awful lot who are still there,

and then you've got the hereditary's on top of that,

and then you've got the people who appears way before Blair became prime minister.

I do think that Tony Blair figure is really interesting

because actually we talk a lot about the fact that Blair and Brown didn't have resignation on his list.

But look at that number. 374 life peers is almost half of the number in that house.

Now, admittedly, Tony Blair was the first one,

that's really the only one in recent history,

to try and rejig the House of Lords.

He got rid of many of the hereditary peerages,

and so I guess he sort of made up the numbers in terms of life peers.

And he also had an inbuilt conservative majority.

I mean, you know, those who took the whip in the House of Lords,

there was a huge conservative majority.

I know they're one of the crossbenchers in the Lord's Deborah.

No, of course not.

I mean, how do you believe in the honor system

because you think that it values people who've made a significant contribution to public life,

or else you are just trying to sway the legislation?

I think we kind of have to decide in our minds

whether we want an upper chamber where you get elected

according to your political leaning,

or whether you just want to reward A friends,

or B political donors,

or see people actually who come from all walks of life

who might be extraordinary scientists, or writers,

or carers, or teachers, or professors, or dancers,

and just say we're going to have a really interesting House of People.

But I think looking at that, Cameron, 245,

Tony Blair, 374, that's massive.

That's like 345.

It's about 600 peers.

For those who aren't watching, Emily is using her fingers and her toes now to count up the total.

I was so lucky to be born with just short of 700 toes.

Will Keir Starmer do it if he wins the next election?

He said that he won't have a resignation on his list.

He's already said that.

But will he try to reform the House of Lords with its membership and how it's...

No, it's just going to be so time-consuming.

And constitutional change like that really does suck the life out of a parliament.

And he's going to say, well, I've got an economy, I've got energy,

I've got green issues, I've got...

We've all got green issues, mate.

Will he want to do Lords reform?

I suspect it will just kind of carry on in its unsatisfactory way

in a very British sort of way.

It's not broken, so let's not try and fix it.

Look, this is time for a little humble brag.

That our names cropped up with multiple adjectives ahead of them.

Wow.

Was it good?

Yeah, it was great.

Showed it to all the family.

This was GB News last night with Dan Wooden.

This was after our interview with Sir Mark Rowley,

who's the Met Police's commissioner.

And he told us that they are reopening the investigation into Partygate breaches

following that video that the Sunday Mirror put out.

But that will never be enough for the Partygate witch-hunter, Bors,

with former BBC presenters, hard-left remoners Emily Mate,

listen, John Sobel, unsurprisingly leading the charge,

even asking Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley if he will reopen a...

What was your favourite word?

Bors.

I love the idea that Dan Wooden is calling us a bore.

Is that why I'm a witch-hunter?

Definitely.

I think we're going to get the hoodies made up.

You can choose your own Partygate witch-hunter.

It's quite long, isn't it, for your chest?

Hard-left remona.

Hard-left remona.

I mean, he almost got a bingo full house.

I mean, why weren't...

I'm disappointed I wasn't accused of being woke or part of the blob.

Oh, my God, we weren't woke.

Dan, do better. Try again tonight.

And by the way, just on the questions that Dan Wooden thinks we ought to be asking,

they're coming up right now.

Dan, I hope you're listening tonight.

Welcome back.

And now we're going to hear from Sir Mark Rowley.

We played the first half of the interview yesterday,

and it was just so interesting that we just thought we'd keep the second half before today,

in which we talk about the reputation of the Met,

whether the word institutional should be applied to the problems of racism

and misogyny and homophobia in the Met,

and also kind of what Mark Rowley is aiming to achieve in his role,

having come out of retirement to become Met Police Commissioner.

We know that the Met Police is currently trying to weed out from within its ranks

sexual abusers, domestic violence abusers,

people who have been living and working within the Met for years.

And as if we needed any further confirmation this morning,

we heard that a 43-year-old Met PC, whose name is Adam Provin,

who had twice raped a 16-year-old girl over 13 years ago,

has now been brought to justice.

That is because of the courage of the woman who was raped and how she came forward.

But he had carried out a series of horrendous sexual attacks

during his 16-year career as a constable for the Metropolitan Police.

And so, even though we don't talk about this case specifically,

what we want to understand from Sir Mark Rowley

is how you go about reforming the Met Police force

when there are so many sexual abusers still within its ranks.

And what is that doing to the trust that we, that women,

that the public have in how we're being policed?

Sir Mark, one of the fascinating things about the timing of your appointment

and coming back into the police service

is that I would say that most commissioners of the Metropolitan Police

are judged by clear-up rates and stopping crime.

And I would think that your biggest job,

maybe I'm wrong, maybe you pushed back on this,

is to restore the reputation of the Metropolitan Police

after some pretty dark episodes.

I talk about restoring public trust, but it's the same, it's the same statement.

I completely agree with that.

I've talked about my mission being to deliver more trust,

less crime and high standards.

Having standards on the top line is really annoying

because that ought to be being sorted.

You ought not to need to put on the top line of your ambition.

I'm the first commissioner for 50 years to have to do this.

If you go back to the 1970s through Robert Mark,

there was a big clear out the issue then was an out-of-control CID department.

So it was a different threat, but he had to speak very publicly

and that became a theme of his commissionership.

I would much rather be talking about the trust of the public

and tackling crime with them full stop.

The fact I have to talk about standards

and the fact alongside saying I've got tens of thousands of fantastic men and women,

I've got hundreds who shouldn't be here, we're working on.

That's professionally annoying, but that's what I came back to do

because we have to sort that out for our credibility.

And the vast majority of my colleagues, they're up for that,

which is why when you look at things like the case report,

it was them who told that picture that they want tackled.

Let's just talk about some of these numbers then.

So how many people are you currently investigating?

How many of your officers are you currently investigating

over sexual and domestic abuse claims?

It's many hundreds.

I don't have the number to drop out to my head now.

Around a thousand?

It's many hundreds.

I can't give you that number, but it's many hundreds.

Just clarify, many hundreds of police officers

are currently under investigation

who have been working in the force for years dealing with the public.

So there are a combination of fresh allegations coming in

because we've shown that we are up for the fight

and that part of reporting issues is about confidence.

So the fact that we've shown that,

the number of allegations has gone up quite dramatically,

which is positive.

And some of it is some of the old cases

that we're reopening as a part of that review.

And how many are suspended?

How many of you actually said do not work in the police?

We have well over 500 who are restricted

and several hundred who are suspended.

We can get those numbers separately,

but they're changing every day, which is why I don't have them.

How much smaller will the force get when your work is done?

You've got what, 35,000 officers?

Hopefully it won't get smaller.

We'll recruit the right people to replace them.

So I've said we need to get rid of hundreds of people.

If you look back over the last few years,

the Met has been sacking 50 people a year.

So clearly the answer is going to be a lot more than that.

So it's going to be hundreds of people

willing to withdraw from the organisation

who are a serious challenge.

At the same time as creating a stronger,

healthier, better trained organisation,

it's more resistant to this in the future.

I just wonder how easy it is to get rid of bad police officers.

It's not as easy as it ought to be.

So something that most people would have no reason to know

is that police officers aren't under normal employment law,

in most respects.

They're under something called police regulations.

In terms of how poor performance is managed

or how misconduct is investigated and dealt with,

it is more bureaucratic, slower, more difficult

than normal employment law.

And so actually these issues are significant.

I've asked the Prime Minister and Home Secretary

to look at this and the mayors asked them to look at it as well.

Home Secretary's been having a review piece of work

and I think she's sort of considering those proposals now

about giving us more streamlined recommendations.

One simple example would be if we have information

about an officer and we're reviewing their vetting.

So we thought you were fit to be a police officer here.

It is 10 years later.

We've now got some new information.

Actually there is not an explicit power

to sack an officer who fails a revetting.

Now that's completely crazy.

It's complete nonsense, isn't it?

There's no defense for it.

Commissioners and chief consuls have been lobbying

for this for 20 years and from different times,

bodies like the police federation have lobbied against it

and it hasn't been changed.

So we need things like that changed.

So I don't mind being held to account for sorting out

the toxic individuals who undermine

the culture of the organisation.

But I need some of the levers to do it and we are...

One of the levers surely is Louise Casey,

who did the report, who told us on the day

that the Met Police was institutionally homophobic,

sexist, racist, a phrase that you refused to embrace.

Why can you not accept the terminology

that she has used to prove to the public

that you understand the scale and the demands of the problem?

Let's just play you what her response to this was.

I think he's dancing on a pin by what stretch?

I don't know why the word institutional

is such a sort of thing for him and for policing.

By any stretch of the imagination,

I could have said it's organisationally racist,

it's organisationally misogynist,

it's systemically misogynist.

My four tests, I've tried Emily to give them a way out

of what would it look like if it changed,

because I understand they don't like the label

and they think once they have it, I quote,

it will be an albatross around their neck.

So I sort of understand that,

unless I was black and lived in London.

So there will be people who hear the fact

that you cannot accept her definition

and think, if you don't accept it,

how can you possibly start to change it?

I have said several times

I completely accept her description of the problem.

The simple thing about the word institutional,

it's been used in different contexts to mean different things,

and to many people it means the whole organisation,

it means everybody in the organisation.

Now that's not how Louise is defining it,

but if I start using a word in shorthand

that means that to lots of people,

that I'm misdescribing the problem.

You can explain, you can set out what you mean.

In every three minute interview,

you're not going to get the chance to do that.

So you're in the business of words,

you know how much particular words matter,

and because that has become

such a variably understood phrase,

that's the simple reason.

I haven't said we're not, I haven't said we are,

I've said it's not a phrase I'm using.

It's not a problem.

And it fits the reasons that on,

instead of in my first couple of weeks,

I said look, I apologise to London,

we've let the communities of London down without policing.

So I'm not standing away from this.

I'm doubling down on standards that we've seen 50 years.

We've doubled the number of people

moving from the organisation.

We're strengthening training to strengthen leaders' ability

to confront and deal with bad behaviour.

We are as serious as you could possibly be

about taking this on.

She made the point there that it's fine

in which case you might find it pretty offensive

that you can't accept that.

You know, here we are, three white people

sitting in the studio talking about this.

Doesn't she have a point?

So it's a,

it's a contentious phrase with a long history,

and

some people feel

very, very strongly that unless you say that word

you're not serious. I know that.

And it's with a, it's with a heavy heart

I chose not to use it.

But when I know that for a big proportion of people

it's entirely different, which isn't what she means.

That's why I've stood away from it.

And I realise that's contentious, but

I think at the end of the day

the thing that's going to matter to London's communities

and elsewhere is how serious are we

about being better, about fixing the issues at hand.

And that's what, and we're making

progress on that through training, through removing people,

putting more officers back into communities

and strengthening what we're doing there, through improving,

it's practically day by day improving policing

and improving our values. That's what's going to make the difference.

Do you think the case you report

has scared off members of the public

from using the Met Police Force?

Do you think it has made people more reluctant

to call for help?

Or to trust that when they do

they'll get the right sort of help?

It was very raw and it was

very powerful. I think there's a

there's a really important issue in public

debate about policing.

It's proper to challenge us

and there's lots we can be challenged about

and I'm being very frank about that.

But we need to generate constructive

debate about

what's right about police, what's wrong about police, and how it needs to change.

If it

becomes a lever for

pillory, that's in nobody's

interest. If that discourages

the sort of good and brave officers in the force,

if it discourages good citizens

of London who are half thinking about joining

the police, if it discourages victims of crime

from coming forward, then that goes the wrong way.

Do you think it is? I think it's finally

balanced at the moment if I'm completely frank

about it and I think if we look at

completely different contexts, different series of incidents

but in America

there are some big city police forces that are struggling

to exist now because

the way the debate tips

their recruitment and retention all went in completely the wrong direction

and they're struggling day to day.

So public challenge

is right but I've got lots of fantastic

people who want to do

a good job and we need to

Can you recruit to the same degree or is that

why would you want to

go into a police force when people were

thinking that you might be racist

or homophobic or sexist?

What is bringing people in now?

Our recruiting at the moment is very finely balanced.

There's two reasons for that. There's a pay issue

in London and there's the heat of the employment market

and we can see data on that which is

very concerning and secondly there is a

reputational point and you can see that having an effect

and that seems to have

we're already a thousand officers light

and that problem is potentially degrading

post the case report. You've got a lot

that is extremely finely balanced

I don't know how many times we've used that in the interview.

Absolutely. You came out of retirement

to do this job. Yeah.

Do you need your head examining some art?

I asked respectfully. I was asked that several times

and it hurt as I continued to be asked it.

I had this

odd moment when I was 17 that

I'm going to join policing.

I went to university and joined the police after that and never ever regretted it.

Our mission matters so much.

That sort of

sense of protecting and serving communities.

What could be a more powerful mission?

And I

love policing.

I hate some of what has damaged us

and I know we've got so

many good people who

really want to succeed and when I was asked by the

Home Secretary and the Mayor in separate interviews

in a very sort of lengthy process last summer

sort of

is this doable? Can you turn it around?

The thing that makes me optimistic is the majority of people

the discretionary effort

because it really matters that they do day in

and day out. He's just amazing.

I don't want this to seem like a glib question

but which Home Secretary was it?

Because you've had a review since then.

I think my first couple of weeks, I think three times

I wrote a Dear Home Secretary, congratulations on your appointment.

Let me tell you about what we're doing later.

It was a slightly turbulent time in response to this.

I think Grant Shaps was the shortest, wasn't it?

Did you get to meet him?

I was appointed by Pretty Patel

Suella Brevin was there when I started

then I had a three day relationship

with Grant Shaps

and Suella Brevin came back.

It was a slightly odd period

but they've all been perfectly supportive

but the point was about

it's the officers

if we can liberate that effort

what they do in day in and day out say is extraordinary

and it's a challenge but

my job

is to take an organisation through a storm

I think in hindsight

policing for too long

has avoided confronting certain issues

and some of that's in our gift

so like

confronting some of these standards issues

some of it's things like the mental health issue

we can't have 40% of our work

being the overspill of other agencies

who aren't dealing with their work

and then do a good job for the public

the criminal justice system is struggling

that's a big issue and I've got to confront it

the pay and remuneration officers has to be right

the police regulations we have to deal with these issues

so as much as I'm going to be tough on our things

I need to be tough on what others can do to help us succeed

but I've got to take us through this storm

confronting these

so I know I'm going to sort of on a regular basis

end up in squalls

some of those squalls would be the routine

not about policing like where we started

in terms of contentious investigations

with political ramifications

but a lot of it actually is taking us through

because if

we can

sort out some of the things that are undermining

in terms of our, in our own hands

and motivate those officers

we can do anything

body of the metropolitan police

with you and signed up

for what you're aiming to do

yes, so of course

there's some really problematic people

who I don't want in the organisation anyways

let's forget them, the bulk of the rest yes

but it is a difficult time for them

it is a really tricky time

and motivating and supporting them is hard

but bear in mind it was their own words

that's talked about Casey

they care about this as much as I do

what would a success look like for you to retire again

so we retire

we retire, we retire

so we will

start to rebuild public trust

we'll have the right effect on crime

and the standards issue will vanish from the top of the agenda

that's going to take time but if my successor

doesn't have to worry about standards

because that's sorted

there's stronger systems, it's more resilient

it can just focus about how they work

with communities to fight crime

that is success

and at the moment there's not a moment

where it's step by step

big organisations progress

not through magic bullet solutions

they progress through

determined resilience step by step

so the things we've been doing today to bring down

serious violence, we're unusual that murders coming down

in London, we've done that to

tackling some of the violent drugs markets for example

we've done that to doing better work to stop

repeat domestic violence cases

so step by step you improve how you police

you put more officers into communities so you work better with communities

to reduce crime at the local level

most citizens

and you organise yourselves better to do that

and sort out these systemic issues underneath

like the integrity ones

so Mark, thank you very much indeed

thank you both very much, good to see you

before we go

got a message from my daughter Anna

have you got a mobile

phone charger that doesn't need to be plugged in

and I'm thinking what on earth is this all about

must be Glastonbury Week

Glastonbury Week

I don't think they call it Glastonbury Week do they

it's not like Henry

it is Glastonbury

have you got your strike blazer

Anna is going off to lie in lots

of cow shit

in 40 degrees heat

and probably get stung

sunstroke, dehydration

I said what, we'll just start at home

No!

and she'll come back and say it was fantastic

but one of the things that she will not

now hear is the

screening of Jeremy Corbyn's

conspiracy theory film

and this created quite a who-ha

an outrage I'm going to say

when it was announced last week

that Glastonbury was going to be putting on

this sort of feature

film with contributions from

Ken Loach and Jackie Walker

which is in their words

an exploration of a dark

and murky story of political deceit

and outrageous anti-Semitic

smears, i.e. people

were smearing Jeremy Corbyn

for being anti-Semitic

Cue howls of outrage

Yeah, so that is not going to be

shown now which seems to suggest

that maybe the Glastonbury crowd

has also moved on from Jeremy Corbyn

as well as

the Labour Party having moved on very

decisively from the Corbyn

era. But if you're off to Glastonbury

and you're listening on the way, have a wonderful

festival, enjoy Elton

on Sunday night and all the rest of it.

And if you're us, we're staying here

to record Newsagents USA

it is week two and we'll be

in the brand new Newsagents USA feed

we can't wait for you to join us there.

That's on Global Player tonight

and it will be available tomorrow wherever

else you get your podcasts. Bye for now. Bye.

This has been a

Global Player original podcast

and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.