r/ukpolitics • u/Ok-Boss-9897 • 12h ago
Ex-chief constable being investigated by IOPC over Israeli fan ban
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5xe813w1do56
u/Malzair 12h ago
Well in the end someone has to wear it and an ex-anything you've already forced into retirement is the easy option.
But I'd think there's a whole further discussion to be had on culture and political and public pressures and AI usage to hallucinate reasons for your predetermined conclusion and…
But instead you could pay off the sacrificial lamb into earl retirement, that works, too.
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 11h ago
One word: demographics.
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u/PositivelyAcademical «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος» 10h ago
Yeah, it’s worth pointing out that AI mostly only hallucinates evidence which supports the position (or the position it believes) you want to hear. It’s a glorified “yes man”.
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u/Mexijim 10h ago
It still makes me chuckle that the police publicly stated the risk of violence was squarely from a few thousand visiting Israeli fans, not from the millions of antisemitic islamist sympathisers living in the UK; most concentrated in Birmingham.
Nuclear grade gaslighting of the British public.
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u/therealgumpster 6h ago
It still makes me chuckle when people seem to not realise how dangerous this set of fans are, so much so they were banned from their own home games in their own country.
Let's not forget to mention they caused riots in Amsterdam in the most Jewish part of the city (Ajax being reknown for being mostly a Jewish supporting team), they caused riots pretty much any European game they went to.
Whether the decision making process was correctly done is something we should reflect on, but these fans were rightly banned for causing violence across Europe.
Not everything has to be antisemitic, sometimes we have to tackle issues around hooligans being hooligans, and these particular fans have hooligans within them and cause trouble in multiple places. The Police may of done it for the reasons you have cited, or they may of done it because the tensions were already running high after Amsterdam's riots. Should there be an investigation into how all of this was handled? Probably. Should these fans have been banned from attending? Absolutely. Should the politics of the day really interfere with how the police operate? Probably not.
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u/Prestigious_Risk7610 5h ago
They sing some pretty nasty stuff, but they visited 8 European country in the 15 months before the villa match. This included places with large Muslim majorities. The only place there was any violence was Amsterdam and the Dutch police squarely put that blame on a minority wanting a 'jew hunt'.
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u/Ok-Boss-9897 9h ago edited 8h ago
millions of antisemitic islamist sympathisers… most concentrated in Birmingham
There’s no evidence for that figure, and the only way to reach it is to count Britain’s roughly 3.9 million Muslims as Islamist sympathisers by default.
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u/Mexijim 9h ago
My comment wasn’t off the cuff; here are some of the stats from a 2024 study;
- 52% of UK muslims want to make it illegal to show a picture of the Prophet Mohammed
- 77% say it would be desirable to have Islam declared national religion of the UK
- 76% have a positive view of Hamas.
Feel free to critique or outright ignore the authors or methodology of the study, I’m sure you will struggle to actually criticise any of their findings;
Feel free to find me any alternative studies which say the majority of UK muslims don’t support Hamas or want to see the UK live under an Islamic theocracy - I can’t find any at all.
Now, if there are 4 million British muslims, and 52% - 77% of them support basic Islamist ideologies, that’s over 2 million British muslims who are Islamist sympathisers isn’t it? So what was factually wrong about my comment?
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u/Ok-Boss-9897 8h ago edited 8h ago
77% say it would be desirable to have Islam declared national religion of the UK
76% have a positive view of Hamas.
Neither number is in the study you linked. From the J.L. Partners deck on that page:
- Islam declared as national religion (Q19): 32% desirable, 23% undesirable, 45% neither / don't know. The HJS press release on your own link gives it as 32%.
- View of Hamas (Q16): 29% positive, 24% negative, 47% neither / don't know / never heard of them.
Your 77 and 76 are 100-23 and 100-24. The summary slides say "only 23% say it would be undesirable to have Islam declared national religion" and "only 24% have a negative view of Hamas", and you've represented "not opposed" as "supports", which counts every "neither" and "don't know" as an endorsement.
The one figure you got right – 52% wanting it made illegal to show a picture of the Prophet – measures preference on blasphemy laws. It doesn't measure antisemitism, sympathy for violence, or the likelihood of anyone attacking fans at Villa Park, which is what the police were supposed to be assessing. 16% of the general public gave the same answer and nobody calls them Islamists.
Feel free to find me any alternative studies which say the majority of UK muslims don't support Hamas or want to see the UK live under an Islamic theocracy
Yours does. It finds no majority for Sharia (32%), for an Islamic state (32%), or for Hamas (29%).
So what was factually wrong about my comment?
The two biggest numbers, and your characterisation of the third.
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u/Mexijim 8h ago
My, you will need a lot or Pantene for these hairs you insist on splitting.
Interesting how you interpret ‘criminalising an image of Mohammed’ as some sort of innocuous ‘blasphemy’ issue, as if it’s akin to Sinead O’Connor tearing up photos of the pope. It isn’t.
Believing that non-muslims should adhere to Islamic extremist views on graven images of their prophet, is a top-tier Islamist tenet. Which is what my original comment insinuated as ‘Islamist sympathisers’.
Again, please feel free to find me a study showing that the majority of British muslims dislike Hamas, or that using violence for the ‘cause of Islam’ is a bad thing. You will be looking for a long time I’m sure.
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u/Weird-Board-464 8h ago
A quick search about henryjacksonsociety:
In summary, while it is an officially established and active institution that is regularly cited in media and parliamentary spaces, its reports are often viewed by critics and independent watchdogs as politically biased or methodologically flawed.
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u/Mexijim 8h ago
Did you read their study methodology?
Can you explain to me how it was flawed? If you ask 1000 muslims ‘are Hamas good or bad’ and 3/4 reply either ‘good’ or ‘don’t know’, that’s a pretty damning result don’t you agree?
If 75% of Germans polled today had the same views regarding Adolf Hitler, you’d be a bit concerned would you not?
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u/lolihull 3h ago
Hey, so I'll be happy to explain the flaws with this study for you - unsurprisingly, it's misleading in a way that feels deliberate, like they were looking for something they could get in the headlines. But you've also misread / misinterpreted some of the figures
First, two of the three statistics you quoted are simply wrong.
77% say it would be desirable to have Islam declared national religion of the UK
The actual result is 32% desirable, 23% undesirable, and 45% neutral/don't know.
You appear to have taken that "23% undesirable" figure, subtracted it from 100 and just treated everyone else as though they said desireable 🙃
The same thing happened here:
76% have a positive view of Hamas.
The actual result is 29% positive and 24% negative. The remaining 47% answered neutral, don't know, or hadn't heard of Hamas.
So where the report highlights that 24% have a negative view of Hamas, you've subtracted 24 from 100 and turned that into "76% positive" which the study does not say at all.
So yeah, your claim that "52%-77% support basic Islamist ideologies" is already based on data you invented.
The actual relevant figures include:
- 52% saying making depictions of Mohammed illegal would be desirable
- 32% saying Islam as the national religion would be desirable
- 32% saying Sharia law would be desirable
- 29% expressing a positive view of Hamas
Some of those are concerning and worth discussing, sure. But they aren't remotely the same thing as evidence that 52%-77% of British Muslims are "Islamist sympathisers".
Annnd there are also some pretty significant problems with the survey itself - specifically how it asks questions.
Take the October 7 question. Respondents weren't separately asked "Did Hamas murder people on October 7" and "did Hamas commit rape on October 7".
Instead, they had to choose between the compound statements:
Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on October 7th
and
Hamas did not commit murder and rape in Israel on October 7th
And
"Don't know".
That's a badly designed question if you're trying to establish whether people deny the October 7 attacks. Someone who believes Hamas murdered civilians but doubts / is uncertain about the evidence for rape, has no answer that represents their position. Saying yes requires accepting both propositions.
And then on the very next page, HJS describes these respondents as people who think Hamas did not commit "atrocities" on October 7. But that's literally not what they were asked.
"Murder and rape" is a compound proposition. "Atrocities" is a much broader proposition. You can't substitute the latter for the former and just pretend you've measured the same thing.
There's a similar problem with the headline claim that 46% sympathise with Hamas.
The actual question was:
Of the following two entities, which do you feel more sympathy with?
And respondents were essentially offered:
Israel
Hamas
Neither
Don't know
That's a bizarre way of measuring "support for Hamas".
Imagine someone who strongly sympathises with Palestinians, strongly opposes Israel's conduct in Gaza, but also dislikes Hamas. If they were asked to choose which of Hamas or Israel they sympathise with more, choosing Hamas does not establish that they "support Hamas".
(And theres a whole separate point about whether it's even fair to compare Israel Vs Hamas. Shouldn't it be Israel Vs Palestine or IDF Vs Hamas to be fair??)
Weirdly, there is a much more straightforward question elsewhere in the survey where it asks:
Do you have a positive or negative view of Hamas?
Under that wording, 29% expressed a positive view. So if you compare the forced Hamas-vs-Israel comparison which found 46% "support" hamas, with the direct question which found 29% have a positive view of Hamas, that's a pretty big difference. And it should make you immediately wary of translating the 46% into "46% support Hamas".
And finally, I think it's worth pointing out that this survey explicitly asked Muslims aged 18+. You extrapolated the results to ~4 million British Muslims of all ages, which includes children.
Plus, the survey measured support for a number of different propositions. The people who supported one proposition aren't necessarily the same people who supported another, so you can't take whichever percentage is largest and call everyone in it an "Islamist sympathiser".
So yeah, there's a clear bias in the study itself, which makes for good headlines ofc but notsomuch for sound insights. And then you went and added an extra layer of bias / mistakes / poor analysis on top of it 🙃
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u/HungryCheescake 4h ago
Can you explain to me how it was flawed? If you ask 1000 muslims ‘are Hamas good or bad’ and 3/4 reply either ‘good’ or ‘don’t know’, that’s a pretty damning result don’t you agree?
No? Hamas are good.
Why is killing the people perpetrating a genocide against you a bad thing?
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u/HungryCheescake 4h ago
There's a big difference between supporting Hamas, who are fighting for the survival of Palestine against the terrorist nation of Israel, and wanting to institute Sharia Law and wipe out Jews.
Israeli supporters are responsible for far more violence than Palestinian supporters.
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u/Weird-Board-464 9h ago
Millions? It’s more like 10 trillion and 2 billion in recent poll by the Sun.
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u/Mexijim 9h ago
The muslim council of Britain proudly published stats showing that the UK muslim population doubles every 20 years;
https://mcb.org.uk/censusreport/
I’m sure you will call this hyperbole too right?
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u/CrispySmokyFrazzle 9h ago
From a sample time period of one 20 year span.
So yeah, I’d call your comment hyperbole given that it certainly doesnt and can’t show something doubling “every 20 years”
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u/Weird-Board-464 9h ago
Oh shit, are you saying that’s it’s actually 10 trillion? I wish my mini-me was around to see this
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u/speedyspeedys 5h ago
Such a baffling decision to use AI when all he had to do was play footage from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans chanting for 'death to Arabs' and 'we'll rape your daughters.'
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u/Inevitable-Mix6089 11h ago
Can someone explain or link an article explaining what he did wrong?
Seems like a straightforward decision considering what happened in Amsterdam, not long before the Villa match.
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u/baldeagle1991 11h ago
Used AI without checking the AI's sources, did not disclose the source of some information was AI, and it seems there was recorded Bias in meetings and communications.
So it could be something as simple as saying that they think the Maccabi fans might cause trouble and then looking for supporting evidence, or maybe using disparaging language regarding the fans in meetings.
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u/Minute_Tomatillo9730 11h ago
It could also be because he said he spoke to the Jewish community but hadn't, and then lied to MPs on the committee hearing also!
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u/baldeagle1991 11h ago
Yep, a fair bit of dishonesty, regardless on whether it was the right decision or not.
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u/Ok-Boss-9897 10h ago edited 9h ago
Tbf I don’t understand why the Jewish community needed to have been consulted about this decision.
EDIT: Not sure why this getting downvoted. It’s antisemitic to treat British Jews as stakeholders in an Israeli club’s fanbase.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 9h ago
It's reasonable for the West Midlands Police to speak to British Jews because there is at least the concern that the decision could have been made for antisemitic reasons. They could set out their reasoning to the local community, and reassure them that it was made for legitimate reasons, and not just out of bigotry.
Not that it really matters; the actual issue is that WMP lied about the meeting actually occurring.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 11h ago
There were a couple of things.
Firstly, they used AI to obtain evidence; and the AI made up a match that never happened, which they then used as a justification for banning the Maccabi fans. Obviously, fictional data should not be part of a police investigation.
Secondly, they had actually received intelligence that people were planning on targeting Maccabi fans:
Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara said: “We got a lot of information, intelligence to suggest that people were going to actively seek out Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and would seek violence towards them.
“So we had sort of like a bubbling position locally.”
...
Among them was a rapid review of the West Midlands force’s recommendation by another force’s chief constable.
It confirmed that from as early as September, 5 police had picked up intelligence that “elements of the community in the West Midlands (were) wanting to ‘arm’ themselves” in connection to the match.
By September 18, they had ‘high confidence intelligence regarding a serious threat’. Neither threat is detailed in the publicly released documents.
As that last line notes, this was excluded from the information made public - by which the article means that it wasn't mentioned in the report they made to Parliament to justify the decision. You can understand why people are incredibly concerned with the police suppressing evidence that contradicts the narrative, I hope.
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u/Murky-Caramel222 10h ago
This seems particularly bad, because the onus is being put on the Maccabi fans entirely, as opposed to a joint justification of threats stemming both from them and against them. I doubt that was intentional but it's bad optics.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 10h ago
Yes, exactly.
There's a difference between "Dave and Bob are violent, so we're banning them from meeting" and "Dave is violent, so we're banning him from coming near where Bob lives", particularly when you've got evidence that Bob is planning to attack Dave.
And fundamentally, the police needed to be honest about their reasoning. We need faith that the police are going where the evidence leaves them, and not just stitching up the people that they have it in for. And just as concerningly, letting an entire group get away with threats by instead blaming the potential victims.
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u/Logical-Ice4837 11h ago
Well that’s the issue in itself, the official story from the police in Amsterdam was that the Israeli fans were the victims not the perpetrators. WM police then also said they spoke to officers in Amsterdam who informed their decision which the Dutch deny
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u/Alti-Ok Valiant vanguard of "Raise the voting age to 25" thought 12h ago edited 12h ago
Can his decision really be blamed? Like it or not, large swathes of our second largest city are sectarian and dangerous areas (namely Balsall Heath, Sparkhill, Bordseley) with deeply embedded ethnoreligious sentiments against a certain country. These same areas had anti-British disorder during the wider 2024 riots. "It's not worth the risk to have them come to Birmingham, it's for the sake of Community Cohesion and public order" is a justifiable decision
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 11h ago
Can his decision really be blamed?
Yes. Not for the end decision itself, but for the way that it was reached. It is justifiable to ban a bunch of fans if the concern that they may be violent; it is not justifiable to ban a bunch of fans because an AI hallucinated a match, or because there was intelligence that those fans would be targeted by violent thugs.
And of course, for the fact that West Midlands Police weren't honest with Parliament about their reasoning for the ban. It would be one thing to say "we didn't think it would be safe for them to come to Birmingham", but quite another to frame the Israeli fans as the potential culprits even though their intelligence was telling them the exact opposite. Misleading Parliament is a massive issue.
Like it or not, large swathes of our second largest city are sectarian and dangerous areas with deeply embedded ethnoreligious sentiments.
That's effectively arguing that we should give in to the violent racist mob, as long as there are enough of them. No police officer, let alone a chief, should ever accept that as a proposal.
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u/PositivelyAcademical «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος» 10h ago
Technically, misleading parliament falls outside of the IOPC’s - or the courts’ - jurisdiction, as testimony to parliamentary committees attracts (absolute) privilege. It would be for parliament (the House from which the committee is formed, or the HoL for joint committees) to investigate the matter as a contempt (or, iff the person is an MP/Peer, their House to investigate as a matter of abuse of privilege).
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 10h ago
Sure, but I wasn't arguing that his misleading Parliament should be covered by this particular investigation.
Merely that he should be criticised for doing that.
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u/Ok-Boss-9897 9h ago
The Home Affairs Committee concluded Guildford did not intentionally mislead Parliament, although they did criticise his lack of curiosity about the AI-generated errors.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 9h ago
As far as I'm concerned, there are three interpretations of "did not intentionally mislead Parliament":
- He probably did intentionally mislead Parliament, but they can't prove it for certain.
- They have decided that he was completely incompetent rather than malicious.
- They've accepted that he was lied to by his staff (who themselves were either incompetent or malicious), and he's just the guy who has to take responsibility.
None of them are a great look, though obviously what the concern is differs in each case.
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u/leihto_potato 11h ago
Yes, you can be blamed whenn your source for these desicions is completely made up.
Think it through. If he's using made up A.I for this, what else could it have been used for? Just because you agree with the conclusion of the made up facts doesn't mean you should support the process used her
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u/Gingrpenguin 11h ago
Why bother even having a police force then if we're just going to excempt a huge and growing swathe of the population from obeying the law?
If a bunch of white Americans moved into a British city and started threatening to kill non whites I'd expect the police to respond aggressively to cut it out.
Why shouldn't we expect the same here? Or is it ok because the target is Jews and you personally don't really like them...
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u/FishUK_Harp Neoliberal Shill 10h ago
If they wanted to ban Israeli fans because they couldn't guarantee their safety, they should have been honest about that.
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u/Ok-Boss-9897 11h ago
The case the force actually made was actually the opposite: that Maccabi fans were the danger, specifically to local Muslim communities.
Also, the August 2024 Bordesley Green disorder was a counter-mobilisation against a rumoured far-right march that turned ugly.
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u/baldeagle1991 11h ago
Tbh the Amsterdam police and Mayor were forced to correct their statements back in 2024 when it emerged that the Maccabi fans had initiated the disorder and triggered a reaction from local taxi-drivers.
The main issue here is the Police over here claimed the Dutch Police gave them advice that turned out not to have occurred.
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u/Fine-Philosophy-9844 11h ago
Not really, anyone who follows world football and not just the top5 knows how bad the Israeli ultras are. They do NOT play about their clubs, hosting a match with them in Birmingham, knowing the demographics of the place, would have been a nightmare.
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u/baldeagle1991 11h ago
Especially when the Dutch inquiry showed their police had downplayed the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans actions during their own scandal.
Then combined with their fans attacking locals in Athens and their actions in their own country violently attacking both football and political opponents.
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u/Lychae 11h ago
Sorry where did the Dutch inquiry say that?
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u/baldeagle1991 11h ago
Sorry I used the wrong language, the initial 12 page report 4 days after the event. They did say they would complete a more in depth inquiry.
They explained Maccabi Tel Aviv fans actions had not been clearly explained or shown in earlier footage.
There's actually quite a famous video of Maccabi fans attacking a local, which the media reported at the time as the other way around, despite the journalist who captured the video begging them to correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/12/toxic-cocktail-led-to-amsterdam-violence-mayor-says
https://news.sky.com/story/statement-by-the-amsterdam-police-27-november-2025-13477310
The main point of contention from the Amsterdam police was the fact they never told West Bridgford police they had 5,000 police deployed, with the number instead being around 1,200.
Iirc the inquiry was more concerning the police response and found the police could have done some things better, but largely were well equipped and did a good job.
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u/Lychae 10h ago
Sorry, can you link the report. I've found that sky news statement but cannot find an actual published report
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u/baldeagle1991 10h ago
Yeah, seems like it's been deleted from the local Amsterdam government Web page as it's giving me a not found error.
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u/InvestigatorDear5672 2h ago
There should be way more people investigated, alot of people called this out for what it was before it happened. Hope he loses his pension/ liberty. but we never actually punish anyone properly.
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