Cressida Dick would be expected to resign as commissioner of the Metropolitan police if she loses the confidence of London’s mayor, Whitehall and City Hall sources said on Wednesday, with the Conservative government making no attempt to save her.
Contingency planning for a new commissioner has already started, with Sadiq Khan telling Dick she must deliver a convincing plan at their next meeting.
The pair are expected to meet within the next week, with Dick facing the threat of a public declaration of no confidencefrom Khan after Scotland Yard’s leadership failed to tackle a series of confidence-sapping scandals that have rocked the force.
Khan backed Dick to be the first ever female commissioner of the Met in 2017, but the rupture between the two has been coming for some time.
Khan does not have the power in law to dismiss the commissioner. But a Whitehall source made clear if he declares he lacks confidence in Dick, they would not fight to save her. “This is his call and his decision,” said the source.
Khan told the Guardian that last week’s revelations about messages circulating among officers at Charing Cross police station between 2016 and 2018, discussing the deaths of African babies and the rape of women, was a shock too far.
A 90-minute meeting between the pair earlier this month left the London mayor unconvinced she understood the seriousness of the situation. Khan was concerned she lacked a plan to reverse the haemorrhaging in trust and confidence in the Met since she became commissioner almost five years ago. Khan made it clear the Met commissioner was in a perilous position, saying she was “on notice”.
He told the Guardian: “It is in the public interest for me to make clear to not just the commissioner, and the home secretary, but to Londoners ….whether or not I have confidence in the leadership of the Met police service.”
Khan said the crisis in Scotland Yard damaged people’s willingness to come forward as victims or witnesses, as well as potential recruits – which remain disproportionately white and male compared with the capital’s demography.
He also acts as the police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the Met, overseeing the force.
The London mayor said he was angered that 14 officers at Charing Cross thought racist, misogynistic and discriminatory views were acceptable – and that the root of the problem could be systemic.
He said: “What is clear to me that is this is not isolated. This is not historic. It is not one [rogue] police officer there are issues of culture …
“That is why I need to be reassured, as the mayor of London and PCC, that the leader of the police service gets it, in terms of the importance to root this out.”
He was further angered that an officer was promoted despite misconduct.
Khan said he understood the limits of his powers, with the only precedent being in 2008 when then-London mayor Boris Johnson, declared he had lost confidence inMet commissioner Ian Blair, who then resigned.
Anxiety levels have been rising among the Conservative government about the country’s biggest and most high-profile police force.
A senior government source told the Guardian there was concern that the Met’s mishaps were damaging confidence in other forces around the country, with others in policing making the home secretary, Priti Patel, aware of that.
A senior policing source said that sympathy from other chiefs for Dick was draining away.
A Whitehall source added: “I don’t think there is any way if the mayor of London says he has no confidence in the commissioner that her position is tenable. It would not be for us to intervene or say anything.
“If Sadiq Khan comes out and says the commissioner should go, it is within his competency to say that, in the same way any other PCC could.”
Officials at the Home Office and City Hall have “opened channels of communication” to discuss the crises plaguing the Met and the commissioner’s future.
The Whitehall source added: “We are now looking at the options if the mayor declares no confidence.”
Responding to the question that Khan, their political opponent, could be bluffing, the source said: “The train is only going one way at City Hall.”
Dick’s term would have finished in April this year, but in September she was granted a two-year extension, approved by Patel and backed by Khan.
The mood among the Met leadership was downbeat. They feel they have plans in place after dealing with a crisis over race, and announced their own inquiry into the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s kidnapping, rape and murder by a serving Met officer in March 2021.
