Home Secretary calls for police chief resignation

• Shabana Mahmood said a watchdog report found “a failure of leadership” at West Midlands Police and that Chief Constable Craig Guildford “no longer has my confidence.”
• The report said the force overstated the threat from Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, played down risks to them, and “conducted little engagement with the Jewish community” before the Villa Park decision.
• Guildford apologised after it emerged a Microsoft CoPilot output helped create a false reference, later branded an “AI hallucination.”

West Midlands Police’s chief constable is facing fresh pressure to resign after the UK home secretary said she has lost confidence in his leadership over the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending Aston Villa’s Europa League match in Birmingham last year.

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Shabana Mahmood said an independent report had found “a failure of leadership” by Chief Constable Craig Guildford, adding that he “no longer has my confidence.”

The match at Villa Park on Nov. 6 was treated as a major operation, with more than 700 officers deployed, yet ticket sales to Maccabi supporters were blocked amid wider tensions in Britain, including heightened concern over antisemitism and calls from pro Palestinian groups for a sporting boycott linked to the war in Gaza. 

West Midlands Police said at the time it had deemed the fixture high risk “based on current intelligence and previous incidents,” pointing to violence and hate crimes linked to a previous Maccabi visit to Ajax in Amsterdam. 

The watchdog report, led by chief inspector of constabulary Andy Cooke, concluded the force overstated the threat posed by Maccabi fans, understated risks to them, and “conducted little engagement with the Jewish community” before the decision. Mahmood said the report found that “the force sought only the evidence to support their desired position to ban the fans.” The review did not conclude the force was antisemitic.

West Midlands Police acknowledged “mistakes were made” in its handling of the decision, without naming its chief constable.

Mahmood said she cannot dismiss Guildford under the current system, pointing to a 2011 change that left that power with locally elected police and crime commissioners. She said she wants to restore the ability for home secretaries to remove a chief constable.

Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, said he recognised the “significant strength of feeling” around the ban and will question Guildford at a public meeting of the accountability and governance board on Jan. 27.

A separate strand of the controversy focused on an error in West Midlands Police material that referred to a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham in 2023, a fixture that never existed. Mahmood said the report highlighted the reference as an “AI hallucination.”

Guildford had previously denied artificial intelligence was responsible, yet wrote to a parliamentary committee ahead of the report’s publication to correct the record, saying the mistake stemmed from Microsoft CoPilot.

Guildford wrote: “Both ACC O’Hara and I had, up until Friday afternoon, understood that the West Ham match had only been identified through the use of Google.

“I would like to offer my profound apology to the Committee for this error, both on behalf of myself and that of ACC O’Hara.

“I had understood and been advised that the match had been identified by way of a Google search in preparation for attending HAC.

“My belief that this was the case was honestly held and there was no intention to mislead the Committee.”

He also repeated the exchange that has kept the issue alive, after MPs asked on Jan. 6 if any artificial intelligence had been used in the force’s process. Guildford said: “There was a definite note that we’ve got to the bottom of in terms of the West Ham game.

“The summation, I think in the House, it was a question that was asked in the House was that, you know, you’ve used the AI, or West Midlands may have used AI on this particular occasion.

“We don’t do that. We don’t use the AI.”

The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, had already criticised the Nov. 6 ban when it was announced, and the report has now pushed the issue back into the centre of UK football, policing, and public trust.