DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Woke police chiefs are failing the public  

Another day, another top police officer makes a complete ass of himself.

This time it’s Britain’s anti-terror chief Matt Jukes, who has apparently been traipsing around Scotland Yard in a special ‘MenoVest’ jacket, which simulates hot flushes in menopausal women.

He did this to feel more in tune with older female colleagues. So what next? Hormone treatment to empathise with trans officers?

Mr Jukes is no doubt a sensitive soul, who wears his Menovest with pride. But good management is about more than virtue-signalling stunts.

It’s about being alert to the concerns of all his officers and accommodating them within the framework of an efficient police force. Efficient being the operative word.

The Metropolitan Police is in special measures because of its appalling record on fighting, preventing and detecting crime. This is where Mr Jukes and his comrades should be focusing all their attention.

Perhaps he could simulate the experience of victims, by arranging for someone to burgle and smash up his house, then getting his colleagues to ignore him when he calls for help.

Sadly, Mr Jukes is just the latest police chief who seems to have forgotten the primary purpose of the service.

Senior officers have been lining up to say they are powerless to crack down on the infantile Just Stop Oil demonstrators who are bringing chaos to the M25 and other arterial roads.

In the case of Hertfordshire police, they have taken to arresting journalists. Their police and crime commissioner David Lloyd accuses the media of being ‘part of the problem’ by reporting the protests. What does he suggest? A news blackout?

Perhaps we should emulate Vladimir Putin’s law against describing his campaign in Ukraine as a war, and make mention of Just Stop Oil illegal.

Blaming the Press for one’s own failings has ever been the last refuge of the clueless. Mr Lloyd proves it still is.

Instead of detaining journalists, the police should be using them as a conduit for explaining to the public exactly what they are doing to bring this criminal disruption to an end.

The truth is that senior police commanders have been captured by the ‘woke’ agenda, where political correctness and identity politics are as important as crime-fighting.

Latest figures show a chilling spike in serious crime and clear-up rates at a historic low. With such misguided leadership, is it any wonder?

Tax warning to Hunt

The economy shrank in the last quarter by 0.2 per cent, a smaller contraction than expected. Interest rates, energy prices and inflation, are all falling. The pound is back to pre-Truss levels and the FTSE 100 has gained 500 points in a month.

As the National Institute for Economic Research said yesterday, we are not the ‘basket case’ some would have us believe.

But swinging tax rises and spending cuts could tip us into a prolonged recession. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt take note.

Think of your patients

AS we said in this column yesterday, there is a huge well of public sympathy for the NHS nurses who performed their duties with such dedication during the pandemic.

But the news that the Royal College of Nursing has amassed a staggering £50million ‘war chest’ to fund a protracted strike action in pursuit of its 17 per cent pay claim is deeply sinister.

The nurses may think it’s the Government they are going to war with. But the collateral damage to their reputation and the health of their patients could be devastating. We urge them to think again.