Teflon Dick

Apparently Cressida Dick is staying on as our most senior cop because no one else is up to it. Cannot everyone see how insane that is? This terrible woman must be brought down

I am instinctively distrustful of anyone who feels themselves equipped to dispense justice to others — and Cressida Dick has by all accounts been an insufferable clever dick since her schooldays — though I accept it is a necessary evil. However, Cressida Dick is an unnecessary evil.

Dick was the gold commander at the Metropolitan police who authorised the killing of a blameless electrician in July 2005. In most circumstances shooting an innocent man in the head seven times at point-blank range would be called "murder" and the person who ordered the hit would be in prison for the rest of their life. Terrible has instead risen to become the country's most senior police officer, receiving awards along the way.

If it had been me who had a man killed because of slipshod police work and elementary miscommunication, I'm not sure I could have carried on with my own life. I certainly should have concluded that my career choice had been a terrible mistake. Not the unassailably self-righteous Dick.

And then we found she was also involved in the Met's other great disgrace: the obstruction of numerous investigations of the murder of Daniel Morgan, a private investigator and father to two young children who was found dead with an axe in his head in a south London pub car park in 1987. His family believe he was on the verge of blowing open a huge corruption ring in the Met: police officers in cahoots with organised crime.

The Morgans singled out Dick for blame, for her past involvement in the case — she was up to her neck in it — and for being behind the last-minute delay to the report earlier this year.

When Priti Patel finally allowed us to see it, we found that the Morgan inquiry panel had written this about the Met: "The Metropolitan police’s culture of obfuscation and a lack of candour is unhealthy in any public service. Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit. In the panel’s view, this constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

And this about Dick: "The panel has never received any reasonable explanation for the refusal over seven years by [then] assistant commissioner Dick and her successors to provide access to the Holmes [police database] accounts to the Daniel Morgan independent panel.”

It didn't accuse Dick of corruption, not quite, so she's still in her post. But then again, the extrajudicial killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on her watch didn't have any effect either on her glorious career. Now we find she’s be given a further two years in the post. This despite a letter to Boris Johnson from figures of great insight and integrity, utterly beyond reproach, including Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE and Lady Brittan of Spennithorne DBE, accusing Dick of "presiding over a culture of incompetence and cover-up" and adding urging that she "must not have her contract extended and must be properly investigated for her conduct, along with predecessors and those in her inner circle, who she appointed and who have questions to answer".

This is almost beyond credibility. It is impossible to stop comparisons to Putin forming in the mind. Is there anything that could unseat Cressida the Terrible?