The Police and Crime Commissioner refusing to sack Craig Guildford is a Jeremy Corbyn supporting former lawyer.
Simon Foster is the only man with the power to dismiss the West Midlands Police chief, but has so far declined to do so in the face of significant pressure.
The former legal aid lawyer is described as a stickler for process and has argued he needs more time to decide Mr Guildford’s fate, despite a ‘devastating’ report published yesterday by Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Andy Cooke.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood also declared she had lost confidence in the Chief Constable in a rare intervention in the Commons, piling yet more pressure on Mr Foster to act.
Currently, PCCs are the sole officials with the legal power to sack police chiefs on performance grounds, although Ms Mahmood now plans to restore this power to Home Secretaries.
But in a statement issued through his office yesterday, he said: ‘In order to give all these issues full and proper consideration, I will be taking this matter to a meeting of my accountability and governance board, held in public, on Tuesday Jan 27 2026 and asking questions of the chief constable.
‘In consideration of these matters, it is vital that all involved act in accordance with due process and the law at all times.’
One source was quoted as suggesting Mr Foster’s legal background made him ‘very aware of the importance of following due process’.
Simon Foster is the only man with the power to dismiss the West Midlands Police chief, but has so far declined to do so in the face of significant pressure
The former legal aid lawyer – seen in 2024 after being elected PCC for a second time – is has argued he needs more time to decide Mr Guildford’s fate
After a 45-year career in law, Mr Foster defeated his Labour rival Mike O’Brien to become the party’s PCC candidate in 2019.
He previously served as chairman of the south Birmingham branch of Momentum, the grassroots Labour movement founded after Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign to become Labour leader.
Mr Foster, who earns £101,900 in his role as PCC, is also said to be close to Zarah Sultana, the hard-left former Labour MP who co-founded Your Party alongside Mr Corbyn.
In 2020, when Mr Corbyn was replaced as Labour leader by Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Foster wrote on social media: ‘Thank you Jeremy Corbyn for all you have done for our party. Courage, fortitude, principle and resilience.
‘Let us all continue to campaign together for economic and social justice.’
Mr Foster appointed Guildford in 2022 after a recruitment process overseen by a panel that included the leader of Green Lane mosque, which had previously attracted criticism for hosting radical speakers.
He was elected as the West Midlands PCC for a second time in May 2024, with 327,844 votes – or 58 per cent of the total – beating Conservative candidate Tom Byrne.
His victory followed a successful legal challenge to the government’s decision to scrap his role and merge it with the position of West Midlands mayor.
However, the Home Secretary has since announced that PCC roles will be abolished.
Loading further pressure on Mr Foster, Wes Streeting declared this morning that he will be ‘horrified’ if Mr Guildford remains in place by the end of the day.
‘Bluntly, I am absolutely shocked that he is still in post,’ the Health Secretary told Times Radio.
‘I genuinely thought that, having misled Parliament, that having misled the public, and having had one of his own local MPs, the Home Secretary, saying she had lost confidence in him, I honestly thought that anyone with integrity would at that point say ”I have to resign”.’
‘The fact he hasn’t, I really think, is a stain on his character that, if he doesn’t act quickly, he won’t be able to remove.
‘I hope he does the right thing. I will be horrified if he is still in post at the end of the day.’
The row comes after Sir Andy Cooke blasted senior police for fabricating and exaggerating evidence to justify banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from travelling to their game against Aston Villa last November.
His report identified widespread failings by West Midlands Police in overstating the threat posed by Israeli fans, citing inaccurate information about links between fans and the Israeli Defence Forces, the targeting of Muslim communities, the burning of Palestinian flags and attacks on police officers.
As the decision then caused an almighty backlash, condemned by the Prime Minister as ‘wrong’, the force then mislead the public, the audit found.
And hours before the watchdog’s report was published, Mr Guildford apologised for misleading MPs to whom he had given evidence last month after it emerged that the force had even used an ‘AI hallucination’ to try to justify the ban, citing ‘evidence’ from a Maccabi match that never happened.