The long standing tension between police and politicians needs to be dealt with now. We cannot keep politics out of the police, and we should not seek to

Abstract

Relations between the government and the police have further deteriorated in the aftermath of the recent riots. Tim Newburn argues that, tempting though it might be to see this as a small-scale difficulty that will soon pass, in reality it is symptomatic of a long-standing unresolved tension between police and politics in Britain