Poll: Met bosses set to back Ian Blair
Updated on 09 November 2007
The only body with the power to sack Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Authority, is unlikely to dismiss him, Channel 4 News research has found.
The authority will meet in two week's time, and a vote of confidence in Sir Ian Blair's performance seems inevitable in the wake of the shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell in 2005.
However, Sir Ian is likely to carry any confidence vote. A poll of the authority's 23 members found that eight of them would support Ian Blair in a no confidence vote.
Seven said they would be likely to vote against him. Two declined to comment, one was undecided and one person will abstain.
Four were uncontactable, but of those, three are thought likely to back Sir Ian Blair. If all members vote as they told Channel 4 News they would, it would leave him with at least eleven votes and one abstention - enough to avoid dismissal.
MPA member Peter Herbert told Channel 4 News:
'There is a view that we ourselves have to scrutinise our own history in this. Did we question the police closely enough about their tactics, about their response times, and about the way in which particularly communications and the liaison between surveillance teams and armed officers operates on the ground?
"There is a question that we are the body to which the police are accountable in London. Is it partly our fault that policies and practices were not as rigorous as they should have been on the day?"
