Channel Four has just released a striking exchange between Sir Ian Blair and Boris over the de Menezes case, released from Freedom of Information. Boris had gone on the radio to say that one could argue that the police had been “trigger happy” in Stockwell tube that Saturday morning. Sir Ian wrote to him saying this was “outrageous” and made out like Boris was making a general slur on the Met. BoJo had none of it saying it was “hard to think of any other description of a catastrophe in which a completely innocent man ends up with seven bullets in his head… If this man was thought to be a potential suicide bomber, why the hell was he allowed on two buses, and then down the Tube?”
To me, this reveals that Boris-whose critics said he’d be a mascot, not a mayor – is not letting the City Hall machine run on autopilot. It is a glimpse of how he gets stuck in, and doesn’t take any lip from the likes of Sir Ian. And nor should he having won one of the largest personal mandates in Europe.
CORRECTION: I rushed to praise Boris a little too quickly in my conclusion. As David Boothroyd points out below, the exchange took place long before the Glorious May triumph – so Sir Ian was chastising Boris the Candidate (a point Ch4 rather glossed over in their report). No doubt Boris is getting stuck in at City Hall – but these letters aren’t evidence of it. Although, as Simon Chapman says below, they’re a great example of how even then he was utterly unintimidated by the Met.
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