By James Sorene

It should be a simple question. Will the police police our streets? Alarmingly it now depends.

West Midlands Police say they can’t protect fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv on the streets of Birmingham if they travel to the UK to play Aston Villa. This is despite decades of experience successfully policing football matches and a multitude of options available to keep rival fans apart and secure the local community.

If they were concerned about violence from Maccabi fans, then surely a force of almost 8000 officers can deal with it, or ask for help using well-established mutual aid. If they were concerned about protests from the local community against the match, surely they could use our tough public order laws to manage them. What are the police afraid of?

Last Saturday, thousands of protestors marched through Central London, escorted and protected for the entire day by hundreds of police officers. They chanted ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ words the Prime Minister said last night he believes are antisemitic. They also........

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