‘They lied and lied again’: Police in the dock over Maccabi ban and vetting failures

0:02The Telegraph.

0:09The police are in the dock. West Midlands is accused of lying and lying again about the Maccabee Villa football ban. And a vetting blunder that saw an accused child rapist allowed into the Met because he ticked a diversity box. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominy.

0:40Tim, a special episode on Friday on policing for two good reasons, because The Telegraph has extensively covered the criticisms that have been made of the West Midlands force over the ban on those Maccabee Tel Aviv fans coming for that Aston Villa match. And I think the headline on Gordon Rayner's piece sums it up, they lied and lied and lied. And we'll get into that. but also an extraordinary second story, suggesting that the vetting at the Met has gone so badly wrong that they allowed a rapist in to tick a diversity box, which we will get on to in just a minute. But some of the findings around the Maccabee situation, which have been highlighted actually by former columnist here, now Tory MP Nick Timothy, he's done this forensic deep dive into what went on.

1:31He's also a Villa fan, we should add. We should add that. And a Birmingham boy. And an expert on counterterrorism and issues of community relations. But there was this extraordinary committee meeting where Chief Constable Craig Guilford can't really answer any questions beyond, well, the response basically to, well, why didn't you look into this? And why didn't you do that? And why didn't you realise that when you were accusing the Maccabee Tel Aviv fans of plotting violence, actually you had Islamist extremists and protesters on the streets plotting to tool up, to arm themselves. in the face of this sort of Israeli influx.

2:05And they said, well, nobody asked, so we didn't say anything. Well, they said no one asked in a very specific way, therefore we didn't give the information. What happened is back in November, at a game between Maccabee Tel Aviv and Aston Villa, Maccabee fans were all banned from attending. Why did this happen? Well, the West Midlands police tried to spin the narrative that it was because Maccabee fans are notoriously violent and therefore there would have been violence if they'd been allowed to attend. They said that initially some were going to be allowed to attend, but after speaking to Dutch police following a Maccabee game in the Netherlands, they took away from that meeting that they should ban all of them because Maccabee fans had caused violence there.

2:52Over the last few months, this narrative has unraveled to the point where it seems that where the police said they were operating on no intelligence, therefore they had to make this strict ruling, in fact the intelligence they had was that local Muslims were preparing for violence against the Maccabee fans. And the Dutch police have said that their interpretation of their discussion about the behaviour of Maccabee fans in the Netherlands was inaccurate. it. In other words, what Nick Timothy and others are inferring is that West Midlands police lied systematically because they were trying to present a narrative that Maccabee fans, Israelis, posed a threat to Brummies, when the reality is that the Muslim community in Birmingham posed a threat to the Israelis.

3:46And a general principle in policing is that you should safeguard the victim slash target, not act in the interests of the potential perpetrator. So in other words, if the police knew there was a threat to Maccabee fans, they should have been facilitating their attendance at the game and protecting them, not acting in such a way that effectively gave in to the demands of local Muslim thugs. Now, as ever is the case, context is key and there's a lot to unpick here. We're joined by Johnny Gould, who is a broadcaster and lifelong Aston Villa fan. And you've got an interesting scarf there, Johnny, because it's kind of telling both tales, that scarf.

4:29Well, it is, and I would never do this normally, but I've bought a 50-50 scarf. No jokes about dual loyalty, please. Thanks very much. No. It reads, I was there. I was there. And it's got Villa and Maccabee. And, you know, I was determined as a regular at Villa Park to go there and enjoy Villa getting through. We've got a manager who is serious about the Europa League. He's won it four times. And, of course, for the first time, really, in my long life of supporting Villa, I went as a Jewish person, which I find most regrettable. I am one of those supporters who wishes, like Unai Emery, not to discuss religion when I walk through the door at Villa.

5:10When Emery was presented with, what do you think of this and that? He said, no, no, no, I am a football man. I'm here to talk about football. That was a major blessing for Aston Villa and for me as well. I'm not part of these Jewish villains or Jewish gooners because the raison d 'etre of these clubs is that, you know, there's a pride villa and there's a Punjabi villains who are great and they dance and they have a great time. But my experience of Villa fans is that we're apolitical. People just want to go and enjoy the game. In England specifically, football is not sectarian. It didn't get built out of religion.

5:49If you think about Liverpool and Glasgow with very similar demography, Liverpool and Everton is not sectarian at all. Rangers and Celtic is plagued by it. But before this happened, I had my ticket even before this crisis happened, I was looking forward to hanging out with a few Israelis. I know many Israelis, you know, they're good-hearted people. They're noisy. Fans are noisy. I've stood in Israeli football matches where the fans are leery, but that's all they are. And actually, I think had Maccabi fans turned up, there would have been a lot of handshaking, particularly with the traditional Villa supporters.

6:26It would have done a lot of good. Instead, it's worked out like this, one of the saddest days in my Aston Villa life. And all I say is, thank goodness I've got other identities apart from that. Just to qualify you describing fans as villains, I just need to make clear, you're talking about Aston villains, you're not being pejorative. Some of you are villains and some of you aren't, just to make that clear. Yeah. Am I right that your grandfather was a professional footballer in Vienna before the war? He was, and it was a very proud football team called Hakoa Vienna. Hakoa is Hebrew for the strength.

7:03Incredibly, this Jewish football team won the league title in Vienna in 1924-25. They beat Austria-Vienna in a key game at the end of the season. A mass fight broke out because the Jews won the title. They didn't like it. It was anti-Semitic even back in those days. And did your family get out? My grandfather endured Kristallnacht and got out in 1939. My grandma, who was also from Vienna, arrived in 1938. They sort of knew each other in Vienna, but they got together in Birmingham. And they set up with no money at all next to Sutton Town Football Club. And the most incredible thing about them, and I find this a great source of inspiration, is by 1955 they had a house, a TV and a car and a shop next to Aston Station.

7:57And did they feel safe? They felt safe and they were welcomed. And my grandfather's shop was called Britannia Typewriters because he was a great patriot. He thanked Britain for saving his life. My Uncle Peter's middle name is Winston. All these things. He was so grateful. He was very proud to be British. This idea that you can have a Viennese accent and be British with conviction is because that is one of the great prizes of British identity. Maybe he couldn't be an Englishman, but he could be British. No question at all. Let me state the case here for the West Midlands police, for balance, OK?

8:35Now, the demographic complexion of Aston has changed dramatically in recent years. The population is 54 % Muslim. You have a situation where tensions are becoming inflamed since October the 7th between Muslims and Jews, not just in Birmingham, but across the country. We've got pro-Palestinian marches, which have attracted accusations of two-tier policing. And therefore, there's a huge amount of hostility and tension in the air. You're then looking ahead to this grudge match, an important Europa League match, which is likely to put in very close proximity. in the spirit of competition. And we know, by the way, how people behave when they go to sporting events.

9:19Emotions are heightened. People have been drinking. Sometimes they behave badly. And by the way, I'll include people who are religious because some Jews drink and some not particularly religious Muslims also drink. So this all happens. It's all very male. It's all very blokey. You're there as the chief constable and you're thinking this is an absolute recipe for disaster. I'm going to consult with community leaders and other stakeholders, and we may need to consider whether this match should go ahead and if it should go ahead, the conditions in which we hold both sets of opposing supporters. Notwithstanding that there are Jews that support Aston Villa, notwithstanding the fact there may be Gentiles that support Tel Aviv Maccabee.

10:03Who knows, right? But you're there as the chief constable thinking this could be a sort of set of fireworks waiting to explode in Aston. That's a legitimate point, is it not? But where in your mind, Johnny, does it all go wrong? Well, it's victim blaming, isn't it? It's blaming the Jews for turning up. And by the way, after the Maccabi game, the young boys turned up from Switzerland and smashed the away end up. And the stewards had to deal with that. Legia Warsaw was an awful game. Both of these games were European matches and the fans came. Aston Villa has 150 years of dealing with away fans.

10:44Maccabi fans have in the past been associated with a degree of unrest, have they not? Yeah, but you know what? They're Israelis and there's a real courage about a lot of these guys. is, you know, serving in the IDF is compulsory. And when they come here, they are not people from a country at peace. They're a country who are at defence. And that gives these fans quite a lot of soul. So when they come to another country, they are super proud of who they are. Maccabi is particularly a Jewish team. Hapowell is more of a sort of, if you like, a multi-ethnic cultural team. And they've sort of become my team.

11:25There are Palestinians and Arab Israelis from Jaffa who support them. And I went to a Hapoel Tel Aviv game against Betayi Jerusalem. Betay are perceived to be the most right-wing ultra-religious team. And they sort of taunted each other. And one Jewish guy had a Palestine shirt and he was taunting the Betay players. So that's part of the joshing. Okay, you know, to unpartisanise it might look a bit hostile. But I was genuinely looking forward to welcoming Israelis there. And I know that Villa fans would have been the same, but it ruined it as a contest because fans were scared. Only 27 ,000, I think, turned up now at Villa.

12:07The capacity is, what, 43 ,000, 44 ,000. It was the lowest attendance for four years. The game was flat. Villa won the game 2-0. But as a contest, it was flattened by this, I mean, monstrous decision. And I say monstrous because they monsterised the Israelis. They didn't monsterise young boys with legitimacy. They didn't monsterise Legia Warsaw, who were terrible fans. And as I say, Villa could have dealt with this. I don't know how many would have turned up, maybe a thousand. But the sadness is that actually the politicians all got together and said, right, we've got to stop this. We've got to make this happen.

12:46We've got to allow Maccabi fans to get in. And Maccabi, based on their own intelligence, was probably better than that of the police, thought, right, well, there's potential armed locals and we're going to just turn down the tickets on this occasion, which was a real shame. Because I think for us in this country, every Villa fan, every Brummie, we should have allowed the Maccabi fans to come. The issue as well is transparency, isn't it? It's about the police being straightforward on time with the information that they've got. rather than, as it seems, allowing people to infer that the real threat was the Maccabee fans and therefore they had no choice.

13:27When in truth, they had evidence that in fact it was the locals who were threatening violence. And as I say, the game that they played out in Amsterdam, the Dutch police do not recognise West Midlands' description of the advice they gave. In fact, they were not directly told you really shouldn't allow the Maccabee in. There is said to be a WhatsApp group in Amsterdam of 800 local Muslims calling it a Jew hunt. And the Maccabi fans were chased around. One of them was dumped in the canal and the locals said you can come out as long as you say free Palestine. I spoke to one other Israeli who said, I fled to my hotel room, got the key, shut the door and locked it and then got up in the morning and waited to check out and get out of Amsterdam.

14:16And there is this inversion. They said in the report that actually it was a Maccabi fan who chucked a local into the canal. And what's so bad about this, Tim, is that most of this was in the public domain. I read about this Ajax-Makabi match in the immediate aftermath of this horror, and it was all over social media. People blew it up as a pogrom. I mean, it wasn't quite a pogrom with Cossacks on horses and knives and guns. It wasn't quite that, but it was extremely nasty. The thing is that most of the perpetrators in Amsterdam were of North African descent, And most of the perpetrators who were celebrating the fact that there were no Jews there apart from me and one or two others are Bangladeshi and Pakistani, which underscores what this all is, which is that the Muslims are coming together as a Muslim nation.

15:11You know, they are all Palestinian in their identity. That is where the Muslim identity is coming to wherever they are in the world. And there's thousands of miles between Bangladesh and Morocco, of course. Well, they would say they're coming together because they feel as brothers united in religion, sympathy for the people of Gaza, and they see Israel as... The annoying team who won't relent in their identity and their all-conquering colonization. Is it analogous to bans on South Africa during apartheid? One might like to take sport out of politics, but ultimately you can't. Yeah, but Israel was attacked on October the 7th.

15:54Ukraine was attacked by Russia. Israel is the victim here, not the perpetrator. Israel is defending its borders. So no, Israel should definitely not be banned. Israel should be celebrated. If people really want to save the West, Israel is the example. Taking it back to West Midlands, we've had Kemi Badenock, the Conservative leader, first of all call for Craig Guildford, the Chief Constable there, to resign. Nigel Farage followed that up with his own support for his resignation this week. What's your view on it, Johnny? Well, if I was a member of the Birmingham Jewish community, would I call the police?

16:34You know, what am I going to get? Well, what do you mean by that? Well, I mean that a police force should be no fear and no favour to anyone. And the relations with the police, the Jewish community is only 1 ,500 strong. It's small and it's vulnerable. I remember Rabbi Leo D, the former community rabbi in North London, whose family were murdered in Judea and Samaria on the road. He said, the Jews here are sitting ducks, which sent a shiver through me because I think he's right. And if the police are seen to desert you in your moment of need, I think we need a reset of our police force, don't we?

17:25We should stress that this is not just about the police. It was the Birmingham City Council Board that ultimately made the decision to ban the fans, which included two Muslim councillors who have publicly called for the boycott of Maccabee. One of the councillors, Wassim Zafar, had in the past described Israel as a terrorist state and said that having, quote, no fans would reduce tension. So do you think parts of this country feel unsafe for Jewish Britons? they might feel so but i'm never going to um desert villa park i'm never going to stop getting off at whitton station and walking around the back to the north stand past the aston villa roundabout as it used to be known um and heading for this uh this place of great victorian tradition because that's what it is and i think the club has a higher moral standard than almost any other club in the world because outside of our stadium is a statue for William McGregor.

18:29William McGregor was the first president of Aston Villa and he also invented the Football League, the first idea of teams playing home and away over a period of nine months without religion. I mean, really someone at Aston Villa who understands the tradition of the football club should say, look, here we are. This is ground zero of the sports industry in the world. And You want to spoil it, you go over there and do your protest here, but this is Aston Villa. So you do think that the chief constable should resign. You do think that those on the council were found wanting, but you're also saying that the leadership of Aston Villa should have stood up against this.

19:07They should have done, and they didn't. They took orders. And an older Villa fan, a friend of mine, said, if it had been in the era of Doug Ellis, this would never have happened. Doug Ellis was the old owner of Aston Villa or old senior shareholder of the club. And Randy Lerner, who replaced him, this would never... You could have picked up the phone to Randy or Doug and Doug was saying, I'll sort this out. And he would have phoned up his mate at the... But we don't have that sort of leadership anymore. We don't have local Brummies or local people who understand that you can just pick up the phone and fix it.

19:41There could have been a phalanx of coppers going from the North Stand to Whitten Station. Should Prime Minister Keir Starmer have shown more leadership on this. I mean, he is a self-confessed massive football fan. The only time the man seems particularly animated as he speaks about his beloved arsenal. If he dreams about anything, it's the offside rule. Well, seemingly so. Or perhaps he is a proponent and fan of VAR. He may be the only man in the country who likes the rules-based order of VAR. But should Starmer have stepped in and been a bit more vociferous in his support for this match to go ahead, attended by both sides of the game.

20:19He started well, didn't he? And then second off, it all got a bit leery. But he started OK, said the right thing, and then Kemi got involved and even Ed, what's his face, from the Lib Dems? Davy. Ed Davy decided to get involved and everyone joined in. It's a rare example of national unity. I'm just sorry that McCabe then said, this is too much for us. Yes, but now we know what McCabe is. At the time when they sort of backed down, we kind of thought, oh, what's gone on here? This is curious. We expected them to hold their ground. We obviously now know that they had been given intelligence to suggest that their own fans were at great risk.

20:59And that's why they relented. And Israelis are scared of the outside world more than they used to be, you know, because they don't live here. They don't realise. I could have told them that they're probably all right. It wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been a moment of courage for them to come here. Do they need to show courage for football? I don't know. They've got bigger fish to fry. But, you know, you talk to Israelis and they say, oh, you know, I've got an Israeli passport. Can I land at Luton? What about my accent? Some people pretend to be from Malta. Some pretend to be Italian rather than admit that they're Israelis.

21:35I mean, that's the kind of fear that Israelis have. Yeah. Forgive my ignorance because I'm not across Europa Leagues and things. Is there another opportunity for Maccabee to come to the UK in some capacity? Well, maybe next season. I mean, there are three or four Israeli sides that finish at the top of their league. They can qualify in the Champions League. They can be back at the Europa League. I do hope that next season one of the Israeli sides does get drawn back here. There have been plenty of games between English and Israeli sides, both nationally and at club level, that have happened that have been no problem.

22:13So I think a major healing of this would be if another English or indeed Scottish side could play an Israeli team next season in the Cup. Ultimately, there's a point of principle about policing here. If someone says to me, if you go into that park, I'm going to beat you up and I go to the police, the police should arrest the person who says they're going to beat me up. They should not be saying to me, well, in the interests of community relations, we advise you to avoid the park. That's the point of principle which I think this is all about. Johnny Gould, thank you very much for talking us through this story, which, I mean, I suppose we can perhaps conclude probably won't turn out to happen like this again.

22:52Lessons have been learned, Tim. I really hope so. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.

23:07Can this be right, Tim? So we've had an internal review that's been carried out into the Met Police. Chief Constable Mark Rowley commissioned it, pardon the pun, because of the Wayne Cousins and David Carrick cases. Very, very bad apples within the force that hadn't been rooted out before they took to wearing the uniform. and basically it's found that at least 5 ,000 officers were recruited without the right vetting between 2013 and 2023. But equally that astonishing figure that 17 ,000 had joined without having their references checked. That's remarkable. I don't understand how that happens because if you apply for any job, don't they just check your references, let alone the police?

23:56Well, for instance... The one job where you really need to check the references. Absolutely. And also just on a very, very minor scale, bearing in mind the responsibility police have to the public and particularly to vulnerable members of the public, the elderly, young people. I was once the welfare officer for our local football team. And the hoops I had to jump through with DBS checks and different welfare workshops. And I think I did have to give a reference from somebody here to prove that I was a safe and honourable person. That was literally, talk about a local football team that all my children played for.

24:34I was a locally known mum and I had to do all that. And then you think of the idea of just rogue police officers. So there's... Well, I mean, look, I have a lot of dealings with clergy, of course. Yes. And those poor people can't go within 50 yards of a leisure centre without a CRB check. Yes. But the idea that the organisation which is enforcing and overseeing all of this is not doing the necessary background checking is bizarre. and has consequences. Scotland Yard said that 131 officers who weren't subjected to thorough security had gone on to commit misconduct or criminal offences and a man called Cliff Mitchell was recruited despite having been accused of raping a child and was later convicted of 13 counts of rape, including six against a child.

25:22Which is truly horrifying because we can talk about vetting in all sorts of different scenarios at this newspaper, at a political party like Reform. But we're talking about police officers who have got an extraordinary amount of power over ordinary citizens. And let's not forget the case of Carrick. He joined the Met in 2001. He passed vetting procedures despite an allegation of domestic abuse against him. He passed vetting again in 2017. He has now subsequently been uncovered as one of Britain's most prolific rapists. So there's something extraordinarily scary about that. Now, some people say that there is an element of diversity and inclusion to all of this.

26:06In a desperate attempt to meet diversity targets that was set by the previous Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, a vetting panel was set up to scrutinise why people from underrepresented backgrounds were failing the application process. Their work included examining all refusals of black or minority ethnic applicants. and Cliff Mitchell, who we mentioned earlier, was one of the 114 people who initially failed vetting and were later allowed to join by this panel. Now, out of those 114 people, initially rejected, then allowed to join, 25, that's more than one in five, went on to commit misconduct or have been accused of a crime.

26:51The trouble with recruitment drives, and we've seen it under successive governments, haven't we? Boris Johnson's pledged to recruit 10 ,000 more police officers. That's been continued by the current government. There's always this demand and drive. We must have more coppers. You do wonder, does some of the vetting just go by the wayside? And we've heard from Peter Blexley on this, former top cop. You know, you're nicked, Peter Blexley, who says that it's so target driven these days. on all levels that sort of standards have gone out the window. We also know that because of the changes to the training centre at Hendon, the bar for becoming a police officer is also lower.

27:31And we've done reports here of some people applying who are basically illiterate and innumerate. You know, the educational standard has gone down. And indeed, there's no one for saying this is not just about diversity and inclusion. This is about recruitment pressures in general, because Carrick was white, right? Yes, of course. But he falls into that thing of, oh, well, there might be something a bit dodgy about him. I mean, I appreciate a domestic abuse allegation does not amount to evidence that he will go on to be a serial rapist. No. But it subsequently transpired that loads of people in the force with Carrick thought he was an absolute wrong-un.

28:10Right. And it was flagged. Of course, the police, a little bit, I think, like any environment that requires people to assert their authority can attract the wrong kinds of people, people who want to abuse authority. Right. So you've got to be even more careful. Yes. Haven't you when you're recruiting? But in general, having spoken to Johnny Gould about what's gone on in West Midlands, now talking about a lack of vetting, this whole environment that has built up since October the 7th around two-tier policing. We spoke to Leila Cunningham yesterday about the capital, London, you know, descending into knife crime hell, shoplifters going unpunished, her fearing for her own seven children.

28:57The reputation of the police is at an all-time low, isn't it? But I think it's because the pressures of the present, sectarianism, have met the long-term consequences of cultural decay. That the people running the institutions are just not that right. Yes. And they are beholden to an internal culture that makes sense to them and is more focused upon pleasing themselves than it is performing the fundamental task, as we were saying in the case of the Maccabee game, protecting people who are threatened rather than potentially protecting those who are doing the threatening. And I thought that Madeleine Grant, used to be with the Telegraph, writing for the Spectator, captured this really well when she reported on the committee, the Home Affairs Committee that was spoken to by the four representatives from West Midlands Police.

29:50And she said, quote, they communicated like aliens from the heart of a different planetary system. They had become so consumed in their own baffling internal culture that they had actually ceased to communicate like human beings. And I think that's absolutely spot on. This is not just about error, individuals making errors or even being rushed to recruit people. This is about a culture that just makes no sense anymore and is divorced from the public it's meant to represent. Yes, and concerns about disrupting community cohesion, trumping actual threats made against local residents. Yes. Almost sums it all up.

30:32The irony here, though, Tim, is that when it comes to the entertainment sphere, detectives, top cops, they're idolised. You know, we're obsessed. The British are obsessed with cop dramas. They have been since Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Look at Line of Duty, Blue Lights. And they're all single mums with a drink problem who are juggling too many things. I know, but Happy Valley. Yes, but these things never give a good representation of the police. Well, hang on. They usually make the police look rotten and corrupt and it's just the one hero. I don't think any of these things have been propaganda for the police.

31:09Their heroes are the lone individual, the high noon sheriff who tries to uphold the law despite the institution. But yeah, sure, there's a lot of crime on TV. But also the perception, I suppose, that has eroded, which you've absolutely nailed. If you're going to use the word two-tier, then what you're saying, and Johnny Gold has spoken to this, and equally some Muslims might speak to it, black young men in Tower Hamlets might speak to it, they do not feel as if they're being policed equally under the law. And if you have a lack of equality, it creates a lack of trust. Yes. Well, if we haven't broken some anti-hate speech law, of which I'm unfamiliar, we shall be back on Monday at 5pm.

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