Patrick Christys: Why is Partygate still going on?

Why is party-gate still going on? It’s been announced that the number of suspects under investigation doubled to more than 100 and the police are using valuable time, resources and taxpayers’ money to look into a potential Covid breach a year ago.

I get that due process needs to be followed, but there is a war on, and do we really need to destabilise our leadership at this exact moment in time?

And it’s not like the police have nothing else to do.

Last year was a record year for teenage killings in the capital – there were 30 deaths in 2021. One would have thought it was more of an urgent priority to stop the mass slaughter of youths painting the capital’s pavements red with blood.

Then there is the ongoing epidemic of violence against women and girls with sexual offences up 38% in the year to February.

At the end of January this year 21 out of 43 UK police forces had officers under investigation for abuse of sexual powers.

And they have a recruitment crisis – there is a current drive to appoint 20,000 new officers, suspiciously close to the number the Tories cut in the first place, but apparently this isn’t going well.

A series of whistleblowers have revealed some shocking allegations in relation to the quality, or lack of, of these new recruits.

Apparently, many of them are too soft and woke.

One trainee supervisor reportedly told The Police Federation – some new recruits can’t speak to people on the telephone, literally run away from any physical violence, usually leaving their tutor at risk, and even one who knocked on the door to speak to a victim but then ran away before it was answered — leaving his tutor scratching his head.

Ché Donald, the vice-chairman of the Police Federation, said parents even phone up to ask if their son can swerve the night shift because it’s his birthday.

Figures show that on average 9 per cent of recruits are leaving police forces in England and Wales before they become police officers. In some forces the attrition rate is 19 per cent.

Instead of devoting existing police officers’ time and resources into sifting through he said/she said statements about cheese and wine perhaps the priority should be training a load of police officers who run towards a crime instead of running away from it. And of course, today of all days, that’s more pertinent than ever.

Today is the five-year anniversary of the tragic murder of PC Keith Palmer, along with the other victims of the Westminster Bridge terrorist Khalid Massood. And our terror threat is currently at ‘substantial’.

Tobias Ellwood, the MP and veteran who tried to save PC Keith Palmer’s life as he lay bleeding in the street having tackled a terrorist intent on committing mass slaughter in the houses of parliament, warned that terrorists are currently plotting, regrouping and arming. They haven’t gone away.

I suspect, in the round, that the British public would rather our police force focused more on terror, ending violent and sexual crime against women and girls, cleaned up its own sexual offences problem, did more to prevent youth deaths on the streets and managed to fix its recruitment crisis than pumped resources into a report that could destabilise our country’s Prime Minister whilst there’s a war going on.