Another British Policing Disgrace, This One in Soccer-World

I'm sure many of you remember the story, from November 2025, of the football (when I say "football" in this post, I mean "soccer") match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv, held at Villa Park in the city of my birth, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK. The city where the "bin men" have been on strike since January 2025, and where the garbage has been piling up in the streets, and the rats have been running free, ever since. Birmingham. Home of the Lunar Society (which comprised, among others, eminent Victorians such as Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin) and the Arts and Crafts movement led by city native Edward Burne-Jones and his Oxford friend William Morris. A beautiful and once resurgent city (Britain's second-largest) with more canals than Venice, whose city council declared itself bankrupt in September of 2023, and which is currently selling off assets hand-over-fist, among ongoing debate as to whether or not the cry of bankruptcy was justified, or simply politically expedient in the face of insurmountable DEI "pay equality" demands and spiraling out-of-control costs for its new city-wide IT system.

My Dad's family were Aston Villa fans since time immemorial, or at least since Villa was founded in 1874. Until 2020 or so, when 97-year old Auntie Pat gave them up, the family had held season tickets since they were first offered. And as long as Auntie Pat was able to drive (a fearsome experience--even in her younger years--if one was in the passenger seat), and as often as she could, she went to the matches, where she alone was allowed to park her Ford Ka right at one of the stadium gates, from whence someone would escort her to her seat as if she were the Queen of England. (One of the late Mr. She's most treasured memories was attending a Villa match with Pat in the early years of the twenty-first century. She invited him so he could have the chance to witness some "proper football.")

Here's a bit of reminiscence from Auntie Pat, of what "match day" at Villa Park was like, a century-or-so ago:

(Note that the term "rug", used in the colloquial British sense, means a "blanket.")

In mid-October 2025, the West Midlands Police made a recommendation to the aforementioned city council that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans should be banned from the "away team" stands at Villa Park for its November 6 Europa League match against Aston Villa. Jewish fans and supporters of the team worldwide, along with Maccabi ownership and management, reacted with disbelief and concerns that the Israeli players themselves would not be safe.

Two-Tier-Keir criticized the ban, saying "We will not tolerate anti-Semitism on our streets," and Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservatives, called on the city authorities to consider a do-over.

To add more controversy to the mix, the story erupted in the wake of the release of secretly recorded comments that Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick had made earlier in the year. He said that he'd visited Birmingham's Handsworth suburb (near Villa Park), calling it one of the "worst integrated areas [he'd] ever been to, and saying that he "hadn't seen another white face" while he was there. Of course, his remarks caused more heat and botheration, since Birmingham's population (a little over a million) is approximately 30% Muslim, and the city has been at the forefront of Hamas support and--and what I'll simply call "energetic"--protests since October 7, 2023.

The MP for the constituency that includes Villa Park, Ayoub Khan, said he welcomed the council's decision. Mr. Khan is one of a group of Members of Parliament who are labeled "pro-Gaza," and who make no secret of their agenda. Another MP, Iqbal Mohamed--from Dewsbury and Batley-- expressed enthusiastic support. His constituency is the one where the teacher was threatened with beheading for teaching a class on handling religious disagreements, five years ago, in March of 2021. This teacher still lives with his family, in hiding, in a secret location, under an assumed name, to ensure his safety.

While there were some rumblings from a couple of local clerics about possible issues with the arrival of Maccabi's "away" fans for the match, much of the rationale for the initial ban was based, the police said, on concerns for a repeat of the riot that accompanied a match in Amsterdam between Maccabi and the Dutch team about a year previously. Sixty-two people were arrested, ten of them Maccabi fans, and the picture painted of those fans by the Dutch authorities--the West Midlands Police said--was of a band of dangerous thugs whose presence in Birmingham would inflame local tensions and likely lead to serious violence. (Apparently no one in the West Midlands Police had bothered to read the Telegraph article from November 2024—the one titled Revealed: How Pro Palestinian mob organised via WhatsApp to "Hunt Jews" across Amsterdam. If only someone had, it might have saved a lot of bother, later on.)

Since that first article, which was published on October 16, 2025, the Telegraph has published, via either print or podcast, forty-five more on the subject, culminating with one today, in which Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at last says that she no longer has "confidence" in West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig Guildford, something that is seen as an indication to him that he should resign. A report carried out by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, and which Ms. Mahmood describes as "damning," concluded, in the Telegraph's words:

[The] force fabricated and retrofitted “exaggerated and untrue” evidence to justify the ban on the Israeli fans, made misleading public statements and failed to engage with the Jewish community.

That's the "suitable for X-length" summary of an excruciatingly long and sordid tale whose layers have been peeling back, onion-like, for months, each one giving off enough volatile irritant to make one weep. A few examples:

1> Today, Chief Constable Craig Guildford apologized to MPs for using, as part of the evidence in the initial decision to ban the Maccabi fans, a reference to a 2023 match between Maccabi and West Ham United that never took place. After insisting in testimony before Parliament that no AI was used in compiling the report, Guildford now acknowledges that AI was used, and blames Microsoft CoPilot for the hallucinatory error.

2> After claiming that community leaders had been heavily involved in the decision-making process led by the Police committee, it emerged that the Police had spoken extensively with eight Muslim organizations, including three mosques that have hosted anti-Semitic preachers and have called for the death of Jews. There is no documented feedback from Jewish organizations. From the linked article:

Earlier this month, Mike O’Hara, the force’s Assistant Chief Constable, was forced to apologise for falsely telling MPs on the home affairs select committee that members of the Jewish community had not wanted Maccabi fans to attend the match.

The force subsequently issued a statement of clarification, which read: “It was never the intention of the officer to imply that there were members of the Jewish community who had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans.

Subsequently, the committee has claimed that it was contacted by (unnamed) Jewish community leaders who wanted to express concern privately, and who did not want Maccabi to attend the match.

3> It appears that members of the West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign were plotting to spy on, stalk, and obstruct the visiting Israeli players, as part of a well-organized "community" action that either the West Midlands Police were unaware of or were ignoring in the lead-up to the match. The linked article includes a screenshot of a lengthy text sent by one of these individuals expressing a desire to have the game cancelled, with the subject heading: "ATTENTION: SEARCH FOR MACCABI TEAM WEDNESDAY!!" It goes on to list the hotels at which Villa "away" teams usually stay, and asks for "spotters" to search the lobbies and dining areas of those and other hotels. (Link to photos of team members included in the original.) It continues:

We also need spotters at Villa park stadium tomorrow as it is normal for away teams to visit the pitch the day before the match. We have no idea what time this may be, but if we can have people rotating in and out of watching the Villa park entrances for the team coach, we can then mount a quick response, to protest them, or the spotters can follow them back to their hotels to find out where their staying, and mobilise a protest at the hotel. If you spot them, take pictures. Tomorrow is our only shot at this. Volunteer now.

4> Also from that same article is a reference to a "secret dossier" that the police had, which described the stalking of Maccabi players by "masked-up groups of males," with "Asian groups looking to fight," and which also says that at yet another hearing this week, before Home Office Select Committee, "police admitted that they withheld 'high-confidence intelligence' that 'elements of the community in the West Midlands' were planning to 'arm themselves' to attack Maccabi supporters."

And, an almost unbelievable report that (emphasis mine):

In a later parliamentary committee hearing, West Midlands officers acknowledged they were aware of plots by 'vigilante groups' against Maccabi fans, but used that threat to justify banning Israeli fans from attending.

"Collaboration" is an ugly word when used in a certain context, but I'm beginning to think it's perhaps the only one that's appropriate here.

5> And...the icing on the cake, the cherry on the sundae, to top it all off:

Remember how, somewhere far above, I mentioned that the principal excuse given by West Midland Police for the ban was the information received from their Dutch colleagues about the violent, outrageous, and confrontational behavior of Maccabi fans in Amsterdam in November of 2024?

Well, the Dutch say they never gave the West Midlands Police any such information.

From, of all newspapers, The Guardian:

As part of its inquiry, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary spoke to Dutch police, who said several key claims that West Midlands police relied on clashed with its experience of policing Maccabi fans during the match in Amsterdam in November 2024, which was marred by violence.

The report goes on to say that Dutch police disputed West Midlands Police's claim that it was Maccabi fans who had thrown people into a river, saying that it was, in fact, a Maccabi fan who was in danger of drowning.

The Guardian quotes Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood:

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 ahead of their crucial meeting on 24 October, was inaccurate.

Claims, including the number of police officers deployed, links between fans and the Israeli 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.

It's a simply incredible story, the story of a weak Chief Constable who polices out of fear, and who uses his prejudices** and his position to curry favor with or to advantage the side he thinks will cause the most trouble if they're not catered to and accommodated--even if the innocent are slandered, libeled, and possibly put in harm's way in the process--and even if he has to lie, deceive and cover up, month after month, to conceal his perfidy.

Resigning is not good enough for this person. He should be prosecuted--perhaps even tarred and feathered--if for no other reason than as an example to others.

As Terry-Thomas used say, "What an absolute bloody shower."

**Astonishingly, the "scathing report" from the Chief Inspector of Constabulary dismisses anti-Semitism as a motive for all this, hiding behind a fine bit of sophistry, and saying that the West Midlands Police suffers instead from "confirmation bias," and that "the force stopped being open-minded about the conclusion it should reach, interpreting new information as confirmation of its existing beliefs or theories." WOW.