Pearson’s plight will become a springboard for populists if free speech is not protected
The Allison Pearson affair may superficially be about policing. But amidst the maelstrom it has shone a light on 4 P’s: personality, politics, policy, and populism in the county of Essex.
The full details and context of the original tweet, apparently posted a year ago, have not formally been made public. But the events cast a light on the underlying police priorities, values, and governance.
What are the issues at stake? The Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex, one of the longest serving Conservative PCCs in the country, has so far been conspicuously silent on the events of the last week.
He may well believe that he is in the right to do so. Perhaps he is choosing to uphold some formal conception of the Chief Constable’s “operational independence”,or perhaps his longevity in the post has led him to focus on his loyalty to the force rather than the public.
Either way, his failure to publicly hold the force to account is providing a void of silence into which populists are claiming it is they alone who speak for the public. Essex is the political battleground for these issues.
At the last election the county returned two Reform Members of Parliament. One was Nigel Farage. Farage has already taken up Pearson’s cause on his GB News television show and Twitter. No doubt he will soon return to the story.
Three of the six candidates to be leader of the Conservative Party have their constituencies in the county. These are the eventual victor Kemi Badenoch and Priti Patel and James Cleverly, both former Home Secretaries.
Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has stepped into the void and made clear his views on the saga, saying: “The Police should not waste time and resources targeting journalists or the public for simply expressing opinions.”
On the other side, no one has a sharper eye for the rise of the populists than Morgan McSweeney – Number 10’s new Chief of Staff and the Labour Party’s strategist in chief.
Three months ago Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, may have hoped she could row back on the already limited freedom of expression protections against the over-zealous policing of so-called Non-Crime Hate Incidents, it was Number 10 that this week stepped in with a change in tone, if not yet policy.
The Downing Street spokesman was forced to recognise the need to balance: “the fundamental right of free speech, and ensuring that the police can spend their time dealing with the issues that matter most to our communities.”
But without a clear change in policy direction by the Government the populists will not be kept at bay.
It is, after all, not only the populists who will be asking why Essex Police have chosen to spend their time on a tweet rather than one of the 14,167 violent assaults, 2,084 rapes, 1,395 robberies, or 6,858 burglaries reported in Essex in the last year.
At the very least there are questions over whether the police are guilty of a misapplication of their limited resources. But there are other questions to be asked too.
Why was it easier for senior police officers to follow the course of least resistance and open an investigation, than it would have been to say no and instead focus on other, surely more serious, matters?
Do the police really not believe that rapes, burglaries, and assaults should be prioritised over speech-based “hate crimes”? Who is it the police are worried about offending if they made such a declaration?
What is the impact of the police’s involvement with the noisy activists that so often constitute their advisory networks, diversity trainers, and, quite probably, their own Human Resources department?
The spotlight on Non-Crime Hate Incidents demonstrates that, counter-intuitively, the freedom of expression protections Suella Braverman installed as Home Secretary have not yet had the desired effect. Since the new Statutory Guidance was introduced in June 2023 the number recorded by the police has gone up. Amongst the most ludicrous are some which have been recorded against children in primary school.
The failure of police forces to make sufficient changes since the introduction of Braverman’s Guidance suggests that chief constables’ erroneous maximalist interpretation of their ‘operational independence’ from government has again led them to a position at odds with the values and interests of wide swathes of the public.
Two years ago, few had heard of the term “two-tier policing” – and indeed the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and ministers have vigorously denied its existence. But it is cases such as these which repeatedly lead to policing being accused of failing to operate without “fear or favour”.
Number 10 is right to have promised that a review of Non-Crime Hate Incidents will follow. But that review must lead to the production of unambiguous directions to police forces to focus on what really matters to the public: crime and disorder.
A restoration of common sense to policing may well be the first step for the Government and His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in their joint mission to keep the populists at bay.
David Spencer is Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime and Justice and a former Detective Chief Inspector