Armed liberals: Rod Liddle says that there is a nasty whiff of New Labour about Sir Ian Blair and his police force.

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 27-AUG-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

A little earlier this week there were 21 Metropolitan Police officers hanging around the side of the road in Surrey Docks, each of them with a little clipboard and a little pencil and a little notebook, all dressed up in little yellow tunics so that they could be seen by drivers at night (it was actually lunchtime). I think they were checking car tax discs, because they stopped about one vehicle in three and asked questions of the drivers and poked around in documentation, etc. But nobody at the Met could give me a definitive answer. Maybe they were actually off duty and this was simply an example of the sort of activity they like to do in their spare time; in any case, they seemed happy enough, which is the important thing. I know there were 21 of them because I counted them.

Something has happened to the British police in the last ten or 15 years; I'm not sure quite what. The easy answer is that they have...

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