Force change
THE Met Police needs a bold, energetic, tough-on-crime reformer as its new chief — not another woke time-server who’s merely next up to bat.
Anyone tainted by the rotten culture, multiple scandals and serial failures of the grim Cressida Dick and Bernard Hogan-Howe decade should be discounted. That includes Neil Basu.
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Basu deserves some credit for becoming our highest-ranking British-Asian cop.
He is London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s favourite.
But he has spent his long, chequered career entirely at the Met.
No one up to their neck in the management of a force so obviously in crisis can suddenly be the new broom.
Nor do Basu’s record, politically-correct obsessions or instincts merit the promotion.
His hostility to the free Press, for example, screams of a man with no regard for its function — and allergic to scrutiny.
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When a reporter rightly exposed memos from our ambassador to Washington attacking Donald Trump, Basu wanted the journo found and prosecuted.
Years earlier he enthusiastically ran Operation Elveden, the calamitous failed probe into Sun journalists over stories in the public interest.
One supporter tells us: “Neil is one of our own. Someone who would bring continuity.”
That’s the problem. Continuity is the last thing the Met needs.
Its clear-up rates for serious crimes are shameful.
When not apologising for bigots, bunglers or even killers in its ranks, it’s fixated on its woke, inclusive image and virtue-signalling on Twitter.
London’s residents are abandoned meanwhile to a tsunami of criminality.
We say to Home Secretary Priti Patel: Forget Basu or other Met veterans.
Find an outsider who’ll scrap the stunts, crack down remorselessly on crime and shake up this failing force.
Power failure
ON fracking, the Government has lost both its nerve and its mind.
It is a truly appalling decision to order our only two shale gas wells to be sealed.
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In an ideal world Britain would power itself entirely with wind, solar and new nuclear plants.
Sun readers would love that.
But Net Zero’s still just a dream, decades off.
The greenest solution meantime is gas-fired power plants.
We can extract British gas cheaply via fracking.
Or import it at increasingly eye-watering cost. It’s a no-brainer.
Telling Cuadrilla to give up is a disastrous own-goal.
Every home will pay the price.
No defence
KURT Zouma is a “good lad” when not attacking defenceless animals, says his manager David Moyes.
And, incredibly, he’s ready to play his star signing again tomorrow.
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We know he was pricey, and West Ham desperately want that top-four place.
But what about decency? Suspend him.
