The police chief who used “exaggerated and untrue” intelligence to justify a ban on Israeli football fans was clinging on to his job on Wednesday despite the home secretary demanding he resign.
Craig Guildford, who leads West Midlands police, is determined to stay in his post for now, the Guardian has learned, despite a war of words that culminated in Shabana Mahmood declaring she had lost confidence in him.
It is the first time in 20 years a home secretary has said this of a serving police leader and it came after a report savaged the force’s handling of intelligence used to justify the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters attending a match at Aston Villa in November.
Mahmood told the Commons she had no power to oust Guildford and wanted the law changed so that the home secretary could again dismiss chief constables.
Such a move would be controversial, with Reform leading in the polls and vowing to curtail the operational independence of police.
The report by Sir Andy Cooke, the chief inspector of constabulary, uncovered a string of errors in how the West Midlands force gathered intelligence on the risks of Maccabi fans coming to Birmingham.
The threat was “greatly exaggerated”, leaving a safety committee that relied on the police intelligence “with little or no option” but to ban them, the report said.
It said the force made misleading statements through “confirmation bias” and “carelessness rather than any deliberate distortion”, and not through antisemitism. Nor was it due to bowing to political pressure from those in Birmingham angered by Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza.
The report blamed the force’s leadership and Mahmood was even more damning, saying: “Faced by a game of such importance, the chief constable of the force, Craig Guildford, should have ensured more professional and thorough work was done.
“As Sir Andy himself says the ‘shortcomings’ detailed in his report are, and I quote, ‘symptomatic of a force not applying the necessary strategic oversight and not paying enough attention to important matters of detail, including at the most senior levels’.
“The ultimate responsibility for the force’s failure to discharge its duties on a matter of such national importance rests with the chief constable, and it is for that reason that I must declare today that the chief constable of West Midlands police no longer has my confidence.”
One senior policing source said Guildford was a “dead man walking”, with the errors “dumbfounding” investigators, the home secretary and her officials.
The only person who can oust Guildford is Simon Foster, the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands.
He has praised Guildford for improving the force’s performance and service to the public. He said he would consider Cooke’s report, a second one which is expected from the policing inspectorate and one from MPs on the home affairs committee, as well as subjecting Guildford to a public inquisition on 27 January.
The Guardian understands Guildford does not believe that demands from the home secretary necessitate his immediate resignation. He will wait to see whether Foster decides to trigger the process for dismissal. The force leadership believes its decisions kept the public safe but accepts there are clear lessons to be learned.
Central to the police case for a ban was what officers claimed Dutch police told them about a Maccabi game in Amsterdam in 2024. Guildford and his force believed Maccabi fans were perpetrators of violence, with the report saying it wrongly blamed them, when it knew of information to the contrary.
Testimony from Dutch police to the inquiry, revealed on Monday by the Guardian, crucially undermined the force’s credibility with Cooke – they disputed a raft of claims alleged to have come from them and on which UK police relied.
Mahmood said: “The West Midlands police engagement with the Dutch police is one of the most disquieting elements of Sir Andy’s report. The summary, provided as evidence to the safety advisory group … was inaccurate.
“Claims, including the number of police officers deployed, links between fans and the Israel Defense Forces, the targeting of Muslim communities, the mass tearing down of Palestinian flags [in Amsterdam], attacks on police officers, and on taxi drivers were all either exaggerated or simply untrue.”
The safety group was told Maccabi fans threw Muslims into a river. In fact an Israeli fan was thrown in the water, and Cooke said British police knew that having read official Dutch reports.
Mahmood said Cooke’s findings showed that “the police overstated the threat posed by the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, while understating the risk that was posed to the Israeli fans if they travelled to the area” amid intelligence that some people in Birmingham were preparing to arm themselves.
Guildford has apologised for the inclusion in his force’s intelligence reports of a Maccabi match against West Ham, which never took place. Cooke said one officer described the error as “an AI hallucination”.
West Midlands police said: “We know that mistakes were made but reiterate the findings that none of this was done with an intent of deliberate distortion or discrimination.
“West Midlands police is an anti-discriminatory organisation and our planning for this football match was always about public safety of all communities.”
Ruth Jacobs, chair of the Birmingham and West Midlands Jewish Community, said of Guildford: “I think the majority of the community would feel that this is the right time to go in view of all the dreadful things that have been revealed.”
While Foster said he would wait, Birmingham council’s leader and the West Midlands mayor, both Labour, said Guildford must go.
The government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, Lord Mann, also said the chief constable should go: “You can’t be seen to be misleading a committee and that’s not tenable in high public office.
“If I can find out the straightforward facts, why can’t the West Midlands police.”
