Nick Timothy MP: ‘Are West Midlands Police capable of ensuring peace and order on the streets, without surrendering to the threats of activists and thugs?’
December 4, 2025 10:19
The justification for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from Villa Park has been blown apart. It was clear for everyone to see when the chief constable of West Midlands Police and his deputy were questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee on Monday. The police had hoped to use the hearing to close down the story, but they achieved the opposite.
It is clearer than ever that something was very deeply wrong with this decision.
The case for a ban rested entirely, as Craig Guildford admitted, on information about the disorder before and after the match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam last year. We already knew that the West Midlands Police characterisation of the Israeli supporters – as uniquely violent hooligans – was denied by the Dutch police. But Guildford turned up at the Committee and repeated so-called “intelligence” information that the Dutch had already said was “not true”.
In one case, the chief constable almost admitted that the evidence they continued to defend was in fact fabricated. His intelligence report claimed 5,000 Dutch officers were needed to quell the trouble in Amsterdam. But the Dutch police said they deployed only 1,200 officers. Guildford admitted it was not the Dutch who had provided the 5,000 figure, but West Midlands Police themselves, making a “professional assumption”. In other words, they simply made it up.
Lord Mann, the government’s adviser on antisemitism and an expert on football hooliganism, also appeared before the Committee. He said, “the evidence has been fitted [by the police] to try and get a solution”. That predetermined solution was to ban the Israelis from the match.
Without evidence, the chief constable defended details of the intelligence report that the Dutch had rubbished. These claims – that they were “experienced fighters…linked to the Israel Defence Forces”, had gone into Muslim areas to attack civilians, and thrown local people into the river – do not stack up at all.
The police explained away the contradictions by claiming their Dutch counterparts had changed their story under “pressure” from their own local politicians. Are we seriously expected to believe that the Dutch police lied to the people of the Netherlands, the world’s media, the Dutch Justice and Security Inspectorate, the Mayor of Amsterdam, and most recently the Sunday Times – only to tell the truth just once to West Midlands Police in a private meeting that was not minuted?
And are we supposed to take seriously an intelligence report that – as the Chief Constable freely admitted – referred to a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham that never even happened? There was not even a hint of embarrassment at so significant an error.
West Midlands Police were supposed to bring to the Select Committee the evidence for their assertions that led to the ban on Israeli supporters coming to Villa Park. And they failed to do so.
Policing in England has always rested upon the principle of policing by consent. That, in the words of Sir Robert Peel, the police are the public, and the public are the police. But whose consent does West Midlands Police believe it needs to do its job? Is it all the residents who live in and around Birmingham? Or is it the activists and thugs and politicians who would not accept the presence of Israeli supporters in our country’s second city?
The police claimed they sought the views of the local Jewish community as officers conducted their Community Impact Assessment in September. On Monday, the Assistant Chief Constable even claimed that people from “a range of faiths, backgrounds and ethnicities … were very concerned” about the presence of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans – and that this included Jewish residents. Needless to say this is disputed by members of the Jewish community.
One person who remains delighted by the ban is the local MP – a so-called Gaza Independent. Ayoub Khan has spent much of his time since the match attacking anybody who shows concern about this apparent abandonment of police impartiality. As he put it in a petition against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Aston is a “predominantly Muslim community”, and he believed the presence of the Israeli supporters to be a provocation.
Does Craig Guildford’s force police without fear or favour? Are West Midlands Police capable of ensuring peace and order on the streets, without surrendering to the threats of activists and thugs? Have they told the public – and Parliament – the truth? And do they have the confidence of the local Jewish community?
On Monday, they were supposed to convince us that the answers to these questions were “yes”. But they failed. So this is not the end of the story. We will keep going until we get the truth – and until we can be confident that it is the authorities – acting for all of us – who enforce the law, not a hateful and violent minority.
Nick Timothy is the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Suffolk.
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