The Morning Star is calling on London Mayor Sadiq Khan to sack Met Police boss Mark Rowley

Morning Star Editorial: Sadiq Khan must sack Mark Rowley

MARK ROWLEY is fast becoming a menace to democracy in Britain. The country’s most powerful police officer is daily transgressing the limits — on partisanship, on political interference, on responsibility to all citizens — which have traditionally bounded the public interventions of leading state officials.

Of course, those limits have often been honoured in the breach.  But the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has discarded all appearances of impartiality and, indeed, truthfulness.

It has long been clear that he has a special animus for the Palestine solidarity movement. He has sought to restrict its demonstrations on the most specious grounds and arrest its organisers for entirely peaceful and responsible conduct.

After the most notorious of such crackdowns, on the demonstration in January 2025, Rowley hastened to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which had been pushing for protest curbs, to receive an ovation from them the very next day.

By contrast, he has consistently refused to meet the organisers of the protests. He has been zealous in arresting peaceful objectors to the Palestine Action proscription.

Now he is deploying direct falsehoods in his attempt to rationalise a still more severe crackdown. He has accused the organisers of the huge demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of repeatedly seeking to march past synagogues.

That is a lie, as Rowley knows. The campaign has never sought to march past synagogues nor protest outside them in any way. Had they done so, it would indeed have been a matter of concern.

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Continues at Morning Star Editorial: Sadiq Khan must sack Mark Rowley