Cressida Dick: The Prime Minister's Last Remaining Ally

Dame Cressida Dick, the supremely well-connected incumbent Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Already au fait with the presence of controversy in her professional career, she finds herself at the centre of yet another brewing nationwide scandal for the second time in a matter of months. 

Before becoming embroiled in the 'Partygate' scandal that she currently finds herself tangled up in, there was already a strong contingent of the public, not only from London but also much further afield, that felt it was time she tendered her resignation from the top job within the Metropolitan Police. 

Such ill-feeling presented itself against her following the Met Police's handling of the vigil for Sarah Everard, the 33-year-old woman subjected to a grotesque kidnap, sexual attack and subsequent murder by then-serving 48-year-old Met Police officer Wayne Couzens.

Couzens was a firearms officer, working for a Met Police unit based in Westminister that is given responsibility for protecting VIPs and diplomats in the Capital. 

He had just completed a 12-hour shift at the US Embassy on the day he carried out his depraved attack. 

Using his Met Police-issued handcuffs and warrant card, he manipulated Sarah Everard into believing she was being arrested for a breach of Covid-19 regulations, this interaction being captured on a nearby doorbell recording. This is the last time Sarah would be seen alive. 

The case caused understandable uproar throughout the country. How were the public, and in particular women, supposed to put their trust in police officers should they be stopped in the future? Which extra measures are those in power going to put in place to ensure the future safety of women on British streets at the hands of the police?

It was Dame Cressida Dick's unfathomable answers to these questions that first brought her name forward in the national public conscience. 

Her initial proposal, among advice to interrogate the Met's own officers on the street, was that anybody being stopped by a lone plain-clothes police officer should ask them to verify their identity by asking to hear, and speak to, their radio operator.

Had Sarah Everard taken this step against PC Wayne Couzens, he would have been verified as a serving, relatively high-ranking Metropolitan Police officer who had been on duty that day, and the following events would still have unfolded as they did.

To compound this insulting official advice, Cressida Dick went one step further by suggesting that any members of the public being put in danger, by her own officers, should flag down a nearby bus for help. 

It appears that Dick, born to two University of Oxford educators, has never been subjected to the laborious waiting game that public transport is. Even in a perfect world, where there is a never-ending stream of buses driving down every street, would anybody seriously expect a bus driver to defy the orders of a verifiably serving police officer?

As though the advice she gave as the official mouthpiece of the Met Police wasn't insensitive enough, the physical actions of her officers dealing with the fallout from the case truly drove home the lack of comprehension from the Met regarding the public feeling this had stirred.

Despite technically going against official Covid-19 advice at the time, to avoid large public gatherings, a peaceful vigil was held, to remember Sarah Everard and also to hold the Met Police to account. 

The vigil, held on Clapham Common and even attended in its early stages by Kate Middleton, remained peaceful. That was, until the Met Police became involved. 

It is difficult to see how Dick thought, deploying the very same police force that less that 2 weeks earlier employed the murderer that rendered the vigil necessary, that to surround the vigil and then have her male officers forcibly arrest participants was ever going to be an amicable resolution to the situation. 

For many others serving in the highest ranks of public service, this would have been the final nail in the coffin of a professional career that was no stranger to controversy when handling delicate cases.

Welcome to the stage, one Boris Johnson. 

Johnson was, and still is, the British Prime Minister throughout the Sarah Everard case. It was not in this office, however, that Boris Johnson and Cressida Dick were first acquainted. 

It was announced at the start of December 2014 that Cressida Dick would be retiring from the Metropolitan Police, after a career spanning 31 years that had seen her rise to become the highest ranking female police officer. To the shock of her fellow colleagues, the announcement came as a result of her accepting a post in the Foreign Office, in a 'director-general level role' but with no distinction on what her precise role or responsibilities would be. Subsequent Freedom of Information requests for this information were denied. 

Cressida Dick remained in this shadowy role from 2015 up until returning to the Met Police as their first female commissioner in 2017. During her two years at the Foreign Office, she served under two Foreign Secretaries, the first being Philip Hammond, the second? Boris Johnson. 

The exact relationship of Boris Johnson and Cressida Dick is unknown, thanks in part to the secrecy that Dick's post was shrouded in. However, it being a "director-general level role" and sufficiently senior to warrant such secrecy, with Johnson being the head of the department, it is difficult to imagine them as strangers during this time. 

This previous connection could point to reason for, amidst mounting pressure from the public for Dick to resign over her handling of the Everard case, Johnson declaring his support for Dick to remain in post, where even Priti Patel refused to.

Fast-forward to the last months of 2021, and the 'Partygate' scandal is in full swing. A constant flurry of leaks provides evidence that appears to show that throughout the pandemic, ministers, including Boris Johnson, have been flouting their own Covid-19 advice and restrictions. 

Whilst families across the country were forced to leave loved ones in isolation through their final moments, only getting a chance to say goodbye at heavily restricted funerals with no wake, government officials were sending colleagues to their local Co-op to fill up suitcases with booze to keep their illegal party fuelled. 

Queen Elizabeth II was filmed mourning the death of her husband, Prince Philip, on an isolated bench in St George's Chapel on 17th April 2021. In the early hours of the same day, No 10 staff had reportedly held a party in secrecy. 

From the start and throughout the Partygate scandal, beginning with the initial leaked footage of Allegra Stratton laughing whilst rehearsing her lies with No 10 staff, the Met Police have consistently refused to investigate. 

The official line had been that their policy was to not investigate retrospective Covid-19 regulation breaches and that in any case, there wasn't enough evidence that a breach of the rules had occurred. 

As evidence of an increasing number of rule-breaking Downing Street parties surfaced and the matter persisted, Cressida Dick's force held firm. They were not going to investigate. 

To take the immediate heat away from himself, and in probable hope that he could use it to kick the issue into the long grass, Boris Johnson called an internal government investigation on the 8th December 2021.

Originally given to Simon Case, who had to step away due to having been in attendance at one of the parties himself, the investigation ultimately fell to Sue Gray. 

Due to there being no active police investigation, Sue Gray had a wide scope to establish the full facts surrounding the numerous events that had occurred in Downing Street. 

The gathering of evidence and production of the report took roughly a month, during which time Johnson effectively used the investigation as a shield in the Commons to avoid answering any related questions.

With the story still being headline news, and a seemingly never ending stream freshly-discovered, lockdown-breaking parties making the press, murmurings began in late January that the investigation was near conclusion and the report on its way to publication. 

It was at this crucial point, that Dick decided the Met Police had no choice but become involved in the scandal. 

Not only did this have the effect of delaying the publication of the Sue Gray report, it also muddied the waters regarding what could now be published and what needed to be left out due to it being under police investigation. 

It is thought, that contrary to its original form, the Sue Gray report resorted to making "minimal reference" to the most serious claims. 

By happy coincidence, as Johnson would have you believe, it meant that the most serious breaches of Covid-19 regulations that he oversaw, in his own residence, would now be diluted before being served to the public. 

Furthermore, much as he did with the Sue Gray report, he now had a brand new shield to brandish in the Commons, in the form of "being unable to comment on an active police investigation."

Although undoubtedly damaging for a sitting Prime Minister to be under criminal investigation, for an Eton schoolboy who once professed ambitions of becoming "world king", the choice between this scenario and resignation didn't require a second thought. 

If there were any lingering doubts as to whether the Met Police Commissioner would act in a way that seems to serve no-one other than the Prime Minister, they can be quashed with the announcement from the Met Police that they will not name anyone they fine in relation to the Downing Street parties. 

Were Johnson to be charged with breaching Covid-19 regulations, Cressida Dick's police force would keep it a secret for him. 

Are we watching, in front of our eyes, the Met Police Commissioner repay the Prime Minister, her old friend from the Foreign Office, for his support through her own scandal?

One thing is for certain, the public must immediately be given details of any correspondence or meetings held between the two parties. From the outside looking in, it looks like collusion at the very highest level.