Everyone is familiar with the old insult that you can tell when a politician is not telling the truth because his lips move. Be that as it may, a variation of this has emerged, but this time when someone from West Midlands Police is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Did West Midlands Police simply make stuff up? It’s difficult to avoid that conclusion

It emerged on Sunday that when the chief constable, Craig Guildford and the assistant chief constable, Mike O’Hara, gave evidence last Monday on why they decided to ban Jews – sorry, Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv – from last month’s Europa League game at Villa Park in Birmingham, they told an untruth so whopping and so central to their argument that they acted properly and in good faith, that it is difficult to see how they can now remain in their jobs.

O’Hara repeatedly told MPs that Birmingham’s own Jewish community had favoured the ban. This, he suggested, formed a key part of their assessment that it was too ‘high risk’ to allow Israeli fans to........

© The Spectator