Even as he resigned, Craig Guildford couldn’t do the decent thing. Perhaps that’s no surprise. We have learned in recent weeks that the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police has been habitually obfuscating over the circumstances under which Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from Birmingham, and even misled parliament when he failed to disclose that the force’s intelligence report included an entirely invented football match. This week Guildford was entirely discredited in a report by Sir Andy Cooke, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, and has lost the confidence of the Home Secretary.
Despite all this, Guildford was unapologetic, claiming that his resignation was due to ‘the political and media frenzy around myself and my position’. This line was echoed by Simon Foster, Police and Crime Commissioner for the region, who said that Guildford had ‘acted with honour’.
The truth is that there is nothing honourable about Guildford’s conduct, and it is appalling that he has been allowed to resign with his pension. It’s worth reflecting on exactly what he did, and for whom.
In October, after being petitioned by the ‘independent’ MP Ayoub Khan, and threatened with protests by Birmingham’s Muslim community, Guildford’s force provided briefings to Birmingham City Council’s ‘Safety Advisory Group’ which we now know to be inaccurate. On the basis of those briefings the Israeli fans were banned from the game. This was on the basis of intelligence showing their supporters might be a threat to the local community.
That intelligence claimed that Dutch police had said that in Amsterdam Maccabi fans had ‘randomly picked Muslims in Amsterdam to attack’ and that they needed ‘5,000 officers’ to control the situation. Dutch police have subsequently denied providing such information. West Midlands Police also claimed that in Amsterdam, Maccabi fans had thrown people into the river. In fact, according to the Dutch, a Maccabi fan was thrown into a canal by a pro-Palestinian.
This week’s report by Sir Andy Cooke made it clear that Guildford’s force had used ‘exaggerated and untrue’ evidence to justify their ‘confirmation bias’ to enact the ban, had misled the public in their statements and did not engage properly with the local Jewish community.
We do know that West Midlands Police engaged with other parts of the ‘community’, including, it seems, ‘three organisations who had previously hosted Islamic preachers who promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or called for the death of Jews’. Unfortunately this is unsurprising for West Midlands Police, who have a habit of delegating their operational decisions to the city’s Muslim ‘community leaders’. During the 2024 riots the force chose not to deal with an apparently Muslim mob armed with weapons, preferring to consult ‘community leaders’.
It’s also revealing to note who has come out to defend Guildford. Roshan Salih, editor of 5 Pillars, dismissed this as ‘a political decision’ made by the Home Secretary ‘to appease her Zionist controllers’ before adding that ‘we have had enough of Israeli interference in local affairs’.
Meanwhile Ayoub Khan MP repeatedly posted criticisms of ‘Sir Cooke’s findings’, dismissed what he called ‘Islamophobic rhetoric’ and insisted that the Chief Constable is ‘an honourable man of integrity’. From which we can only conclude that Khan’s definition of honour and integrity is doing everything you can to appease the likes of Ayoub Khan.
Guildford should not have been allowed an ‘honourable’ resignation, and others in his force should be investigated. If we want to avoid many more instances where local ‘communities’ capture the police and other public bodies then something needs to change. Police chiefs and other public servants must come to realise that an easy retirement with a full pension will no longer be available to those who betray our trust and their duty.
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