On the morning of January 26, Sir Ian reported back to his police authority on the state of crime in the Metropolis one year after his appointment
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against the Commissioner, he called a press conference and announced his departure before many of the same journalists who had overseen his unrelenting ‘trial by media’. In a carefully crafted statement, he maintained that the decision to resign was not his and that he had hoped to complete his term in office. Blair defended his record, insisting that he was ‘resigning not because of any failures of my service and not because the pressures of the office and the many stories that surround it are too much. I am resigning in the best interests of the people of London and the Metropolitan Police Service’ (Sky News, 2 nd October 2008). Without the Mayor of London’s support, Blair explained, his commissionership was not viable.
The immediate political reaction was balanced firmly against Blair. While the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats welcomed the decision, Blair’s political supporters rebuked Boris Johnston and the right-wing press for what they viewed as a political assassination that would destabilise the MPS. Comparisons were made with Mayor Giuliani’s removal of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who had presided over the New York ‘crime miracle’ (Guardian, 3 rd October 2008). Commentary and analysis pieces were unsparing in their accounts of Blair’s dramatic ‘fall and fall’. There were scathing ‘good riddance’ editorials in the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Sun, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, and lukewarm assessments in the Times, and Independent. Only the Guardian reported Blair’s departure with regret, though even its editorial conceded that his position had become politically untenable. Whilst much of the news media focus was on how the Stockwell shooting had paralysed his Commissionership, this was contextualised against his seemingly infinite capacity to make ‘gaffes’ that provoked press outrage and required public apology. Blair’s litany of ‘gaffes’ was listed and re-counted, once again, in excruciating detail. There was a palpable sense of triumphalism among certain journalists, who applauded the Mayor for ousting Blair. Their conclusion was that he had brought his downfall upon himself: this was a serial offender who was incapable of learning from his mistakes but, thanks to a critical and free press, justice had finally been done. Even those commentators who were broadly sympathetic to Blair’s agenda, whilst alarmed by the Mayor riding roughshod over the constitutional arrangements of police 25
accountability, acknowledged the destabilising impact of his public relations and operational ‘gaffes’. A clear, albeit partially reluctant, press consensus was discernible: he had to go.
Determining the extent to which Sir Ian Blair’s prime time ‘trial by media’ resulted directly in his resignation is beyond the scope of our analysis. Blair became a pawn in a political struggle between a re-emergent Conservative Party pressing for a radical overhaul of policing and crime control and a disintegrating, discredited New Labour government. Had there not been an unexpected political realignment in the 2008 London Mayoral election, Blair might have completed his Commissionership. Our aim in this article has been to construct a theoretical framework for researching how the interconnected spheres of metropolitan news media politics, party politics and police politics coalesced to create a mediatisation process in which Britain’s most senior police officer could be publicly ridiculed, baited, cajoled, and relentlessly hounded by an increasingly antagonistic press.
Sir Ian Blair’s ‘trial by media’ established a dominant ‘inferential structure’ that provided journalists, and audiences, with a collective framework and common vocabulary for ordering and understanding the Commissioner’s words and deeds, whilst simultaneously decimating his ‘natural’ position in the news media ‘hierarchy of credibility’. In meticulous detail, he was (de)constructed as an organisational liability who had lost his grip on Scotland Yard, forfeited the respect of the rank-and- file and exhausted cross-party political support. Over time, the journalistic repertoire of words and images that came to constitute Blair’s ‘master status’ in the public sphere were those of a ‘politicised’, ‘operationally compromised’ and ‘gaffe-prone’ beleaguered Commissioner.
Our research indicates that Blair’s ‘trial by media’ did more than de-legitimise one Commissioner. It laid down a clear symbolic marker about what ‘type’ of 26
Commissioner and policing philosophy is acceptable in contemporary Britain, and sensationally demonstrated the power of the rising news media ‘politics of outrage’. Sections of the press were antagonistic towards Blair because of what he represented – a particular brand of ‘politically correct’ policing at a time when conservative and tabloid commentators were demanding a tougher ‘law and order’ response to ‘Broken Britain’. Ultimately, however, even Blair’s media supporters found his position indefensible. For his critics, the ‘good riddance’ departure of ‘New Labour’s favourite policeman’ was a victory. But a successful ‘trial by media’ required more than a resignation: to demonstrate unequivocally the news media’s supremacy in the court of public opinion, Blair had to be ridiculed and publicly humiliated. Newspapers used the same striking cropped image of a defeated and deflated Commissioner forced to announce his resignation in civilian clothing: stripped of office, stripped of uniform, and, in the eyes of his news media critics, stripped of dignity. ‘Unfit for office’ was the collective news media verdict, evidenced by a self- reinforcing loop of time-lines and slide shows that will illustrate in perpetuity his ‘gaffe prone’ Commissionership.
Before his appointment as Blair’s successor was confirmed, Sir Paul Stephenson underwent an initial media-vetting, with questions being posed regarding his closeness to Sir Ian Blair and his role in an MPS investigation of Home Office leaks that resulted in the arrest of a senior Conservative politician. In the end, and in sharp contrast to the other named candidates, Stephenson received the conditional endorsement of the Conservative and tabloid press as a welcome alternative to Blair, and a proven champion of ‘common sense policing’. On taking over as MPS Commissioner in January 2009, Stephenson immediately distanced himself from Blair’s policing philosophy and media predilections (Evening Standard, 28 th January, 2009: 12):
‘Sir Ian Blair did it his way and I was his loyal deputy. Now I will do it my way. I don’t want to be boring. I don’t want to be exciting. And I don’t want to be a celebrity. I don’t want to be a police leader who people will follow out of a 27
mere sense of curiosity. It is my aim to be a top police leader in charge of one of the most important police services in the world’.
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