Last night's student protest debacle is another in a sequence of horror policing operations on Sir Paul Stephenson's watch
Let's get one thing straight. The people responsible for last night's violence in London were the rioters. The Treasury attacked, the supreme court building smashed up, arson in Trafalgar Square, the royal car vandalised. There are people out there who clearly set out to trash the capital. They need locking up and fast.
But who is going to do it? Does anyone listen to Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, or Boris Johnson, his political master, and suppose that we can rely on them for this or anything impinging on security or public order in the capital?
The liberal papers will blame the police for this, said an uncharacteristically inarticulate Johnson on the Today programme. This is known as getting your retaliation in first. He is a clever bloke, the mayor, and so he knows where this is going. He knows that last night's debacle is merely another in a sequence of horror policing operations that have occurred on Sir Paul's watch. The G20 kettling row, the death of Ian Tomlinson and the lies that surrounded it. The heavy-handed operation at the Tamil protest demonstration that drew much criticism from MPs. Last night's violence did not come out of a clear blue sky. Given the disorder at previous protests, without the accelerant of the Commons vote itself, a degree of anger and yes, lawlessness, should have been foreseen.
And the mayor knows that some of the blame lands on his doorstep. Sir Paul is his man. The current administration like him because they feel with him in charge, their writ extends quite easily within Scotland Yard. What was the declaration of the mayor's policing supreme Kit Malthouse not so long ago? We have our hands on the tiller.
They like him because he is not Ian Blair, the loud-mouthed lefty they felt obliged to get rid of. Blair had many faults, on that we can all agree. But what also irked the mayoral administration was his politics and the fact that they found him insufficiently biddable. Stephenson gives them no such problem. And that's fine. The mayor should have a commissioner he can work with. But that relationship must rest on the assumption that the commissioner in post is the best person we can find.
There must be doubts about that today. Too many lapses. Too many operations for which the postscript is regret or an apology. He won't be asked to stand down. The politics will save him. Boris cannot afford to "seek new leadership" for a second time in one term. And the government won't want upheaval on that scale while huge changes to the way police forces are run are in the offering.
But questions are being asked. One such is, why does Chris Allison, the most knowledgeable officer in terms of public order policing, appear to be concentrating on Olympic security?
The mayor, but most of all Sir Paul must give a proper account of the failings in recent months. Most of all we need some evidence that he is really up to the job.