Clueless Craig, meet Nemesis Nick

Horror and Irony, in perfect harmony

Craig Guildford, Chief Constable of West Midlands Police and his nemesis, Nick Timothy MP.

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Here’s a disaster encapsulating everything I’ve written about policing. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the West Midlands Police / Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal. An institutionally-captured police force, in thrall to Islamist politicians, bans Israeli supporters from attending a football match. A clueless leadership team cravenly embellishes (or even fabricates) an intelligence case to justify their cowardice. A dossier so dodgy, Alistair Campbell wouldn’t have touched it with a barge-pole

Senior officers then - and I’m being kind here - dissemble before the Home Affairs Select Committee. If that wasn’t enough, it transpires the police withheld intelligence suggesting local Muslim youths planned to form armed gangs to confront Maccabi supporters (who would, of course, have been overwhelmingly Jewish).

In short? To avoid an anti-Semitic race riot, West Midlands Police indulged in an orgy of appeasement and victim-blaming. Then they lied about it.

Badly.

The hoary old fit-up merchants of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad would be rolling in their graves. Personally, I wish Craig Guildford had the minerals to rock up to the House of Commons and say, ‘yeah, I’ve got a load of pound-shop Jihadis on my patch, itching for a DIY pogrom. What do you expect me to do, fight them? I’d need the army to be brought in.’

Sadly, candour doesn’t feature on the College of Policing’s ‘National Decision-Making Model.’ Which is what, in lieu of consciences or commonsense, too many chief constables have uploaded to their brains.

I’m not going to offer blow-by-blow analysis of the affair - ample reporting exists elsewhere. Instead, I’m going to argue the relationship between two of the protagonists partly illustrates how, and why, contemporary British policing became so dysfunctional in the first place. It’s a tale of ambition, hubris, policy wonks and dogma. It involves people too clever for their own good, and people who were never particularly clever in the first place.

So Craig, meet Nick. And Nick, meet Craig.

Craig also heads the PCC professional standards and ethics committee!

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Meet Clueless Craig

Craig Guildford is a fairly typical chief constable. A high-flier, but not a stratospheric high-flier. A graduate, he joined Cheshire police as a regular officer in 1994 after two years as a special constable. His promotion trajectory was solid - by 2012, Craig had ascended to the rank of assistant chief constable.

This meant he either (a) went flat-out for advancement, playing promotion noughts-and-crosses or (b) was a jolly good bloke who lucked out (ha ha ha). His service appears to have featured much force-hopping, almost certainly chasing the next rank: Cheshire, West Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Gwent. Old-fashioned, tight-knit provincial forces. Craig, I would imagine, was a biggish fish in a smallish pond. He’d be used to his orders being followed. To deference, and staff officers mewling ‘yes sir, no sir’. The command team at WMP is, reportedly, awash with intrigue.

As part of my research for this piece, I listened to this interview with Craig. It’s a typically bloodless, David Brent-style performance. Bland. Managerial. Craig strikes me as the sort of senior policeman who, around the turn of the century, sniffed the wind and saw where the Job was headed. Such officers accepted - without question - every progressive shibboleth in order to climb the greasy pole of advancement.

Craig’s promotion to chief officer rank coincided with the great reaping of 2012 (which, as we shall see, was aided and abetted by Nemesis Nick). This meant poor old Craig spent his entire career as a Very Senior Officer fire-fighting the consequences of Theresa May’s policing shit-show. Did Craig, I wonder, ever look in the mirror and ponder the Job’s inexorable decline? Speak truth to power?

What do you think? By 2017, he was a chief constable.

So, as a chief police officer, Clueless Craig’s very much a product of the post-2012 police reforms introduced by the Conservatives (well, the Theresa May iteration). This meant:

1. The forces he led would have seen swingeing cuts. No doubt he promised to ‘do more with less’ at every promotion board.

2. Craig would have supported new, and largely hopeless, police training and recruitment processes. He’d have stood by as police pay and conditions were butchered - but not for the top ranks, of course.

3. During his tenure as a chief, he’d have watched core policing atrophy into a quasi-social service.

4. He’d have been in the chair when his police intelligence units were shredded, a loss of capability that led to WMP relying on Google AI to help compile threat assessments.

5. And, crucially, he would have unambiguously swallowed the police diversity and community relations playbook hook, line and sinker. The post-Macpherson Report witches brew of critical theory-laced poison. Does this explain his alleged eagerness to assuage the ‘Gaza Independents’ on his patch. Did, at any point, Craig wonder if the party line was… misguided? if he did, he obviously kept schtum.

No, this isn’t the inside of Lloyd House (WMP HQ). It’s Birmingham, a machine-politics city that can’t even empty the bins.

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This lack of resources, experience and leadership also explains why West Midlands Police, I’m told, approaches Birmingham (England’s ‘Second City’) like colonial administrators keeping the peace in 1920s Mesopotamia. A Balkanised city, with black, Asian and white working-class communities living in ethnic and religious silos. WMP’s conduct during the 2024 Southport-inspired disorder offers ample evidence of how the force preferred a quiet life to the messy business of enforcing the law.

And who can blame them? A race riot is every police chief’s worst nightmare. There are consequences: No knighthood. No corporate job, or a cushy quango billet. Instead, a retirement punctuated by finger-pointing appearances at public inquiries. Opprobrium, social media dog-piles and allegations of racism? No thanks. Let the locals do what they like, just keep those Sky News vans off the manor.

So, please, don’t think I’m being unduly harsh on Craig Guildford or his hapless, arrogant command team. You see, Craig’s simply a typical British chief constable, doing typical British chief constable things.

Which brings me onto Nemesis Nick.

Nick Timothy, MP, at the Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match, November 2025. I doubt he’s discussing the Bosman ruling.

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Meet Nemesis Nick

The writer HP Lovecraft who once said, ‘from even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.’ Craig’s horrible hubris invited - as is its wont - nemesis. The irony being nemesis came in the shape of someone partly responsible for the situation Craig found himself in.

Enter Nick Timothy, the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Suffolk. I should, instinctively, warm to his origin story: a working-class grammar school boy, an Aston Villa fan, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and discovered conservatism. A bright kid, he’d go on to graduate from Sheffield University with a degree in Politics. Unlike the Cameroonian lounge lizards who preceded him, Nick wasn’t a public school posh boy with an Oxford PPE and a house in W10. No, Nick was granular. Authentic. Interested in systems and justice and processes.

Which is where, I would argue, it all went fucking wrong.

You see, Nick was soon sucked into the wonkish world of policy. His formative years were spent pontificating over how other people should do things, without ever having done much himself. Consider, for a moment, Nemesis Nick’s CV:

2001–2004 Conservative Research Department (CRD) researcher.

2004–2005 Corporate Affairs Adviser, Corporation of London.

2005–2006 Policy Adviser, Association of British Insurers.

2006–2007 Adviser to Theresa May (Shadow roles).

2007–2010 Deputy Director, Conservative Research Department.

2010–2015 Special Adviser to Home Secretary Theresa May (police, immigration, counter-terrorism).

2016–2017 Joint Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May.

2017–2023 Columnist, author, commentator, consultant.

2024 - Present Elected MP for West Suffolk.

Looking at Nick’s career, I genuinely wonder… where the fuck did he learn how to proffer so much advice? What has he ever done?

Again, don’t think I’m being especially horrible to Nick, who in any case I imagine has a thick hide. You see, like Clueless Craig is just a typical British chief constable, Nemesis Nick is simply a typical British politician. A product of the Humanities degree / Research Department / Spad / Advisor / MP pipeline.

He’s just doing what people like him do. A dog, eating its own vomit.

Of special interest is Nick’s history as a Home Office Spad and, later, Theresa May’s advisor/ guru. Nick, you see, was sat in the eye of the storm that was the Tory police reforms mentioned earlier. He was no fan of the police, nor in fact the Home Office either. As far as the state of British policing is concerned, Nick’s up to his elbows in blood.

Did he consider, for a moment, Theresa May’s grandstanding over race and stop and search? Or was he too busy undermining old Bill to the media, to justify the hatchet job planned for the Service? Did he agree with the infamous ‘Cry Wolf’ speech? Did he realise he’d turn the entire UK police service against the Tories for a generation? Did he care? Perhaps this was Nick’s brush with hubris, too.

All political careers end in failure. Or, in TM’s case, the House of Lords and a lucrative public speaking gig.

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So, bold as brass, Nemesis Nick sees West Midlands Police floundering. Does he pause for reflection, along the lines of (a) ‘blimey, my decision-making played a part in creating this clusterfuck?’ or (b) ‘I’m furious, shameless and / or completely self-unaware.’ In any case, painting his face blue and claret, Nick bellowed the war cry ‘VILLA!’ and headed off to fight. And, now, he’s got his man. Well done, Nick, you are undoubtedly a skilled inquisitor and dogged campaigner. Based on the evidence as presented, Craig fully deserves a comeuppance.

And yet…

You’re complicit too. You sat in the halls of power, bloviating and spinning. Based on what? You tell me, because I have no bloody idea how much you can learn about police reform sitting in the Conservative Research Department.

As Lovecraft said, Horror and Irony. Like beef and mustard. So, when all’s said and done? I’d say Nick and Craig deserve each other. Meanwhile, in Birmingham, it’s still the Gaza Independents calling the shots.

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