‘How can society feel like making progress to stop violence against women and girls if the people who are supposed to be policing are perpetrators of rape, sexual violence?’

THERE used to be a time, in the not too distant past, when official condemnation of the Met Police was rare.

When any brave bobbies came under fire, officials in Whitehall and government would form a powerful protective circle around Scotland Yard.

But in recent years there seems to have become a widespread consensus that the Met has deeply entrenched institutional failings.

This has been cemented in the public consciousness through a series of investiga­tions and reviews, the latest of which by the Baroness Casey of Blackstock (Road).

Her report has found yet more evidence of the Met’s racism, sexism and homo­phobia. Its details have shocked even those who thought they had reached peak levels of alarm.

Jamie Klingler, who co-founded the Reclaim These Streets campaign after the appalling Sarah Everard murder, said: “Even if you remove the racism, sexism, and homophobia, which are the parts that I’ve concentrated on for the last two years, I had no idea what an organisational mess the institution is.”

How can society feel like making progress to stop violence against women and girls if the people who are supposed to be policing are perpetrators of rape, sexual violence – and also the kind of downright idiocy as evidenced by the Charing Cross WhatsApp group scandal?

Ms Klingler said she felt vindicated and was impressed by Casey having pulled no punches in her scathing assessment of the Met.

No doubt there will be much hand-wringing and promises of new dawns to follow. Perhaps there will be a re­branding, as Keir Starmer has suggested.

But in truth a kind of protective circle still exists around Scotland Yard, even if senior politicians are no longer publicly defending it.

Is meaningful change possible in this political landscape? And who is going to provide the spark of inspiration needed to really clean-up the Met?

Sadiq Khan is too light­weight. Starmer too steady-Eddy. Rishi Sunak is certainly not going to rattle any cages as he clings to power.

Police commissioners come across like cardboard cut-out characters, straight-backed and stiff-lipped. There is rarely anyone high up in the force that the public can relate to.

And with real community policing being done away with, few if any will know the name of their local officer to say hello to in the street.

The public has no mean­ingful connection with the Met. There is a vast gulf that nurtures a kind of bunkered-down, us-versus-them mental­ity among many officers. And that may be partly why the Met is and will remain such a hostile environment.