Who is to blame for Maccabi Tel Aviv fan-ban blunder?

The investigation into a widely decried ban on Israeli football fans from a match in Birmingham last year has become a search for someone to blame.

The West Midlands Police (WMP) classified the Maccabi Tel Aviv fixture against local team Aston Villa in November as “high risk”, due to violence after a previous Maccabi Tel Aviv match in Amsterdam. On that basis, the Birmingham Safety Advisory Group (which police are part of) barred Maccabi fans from attending, provoking widespread accusations of antisemitism – including by Keir Starmer. It has since emerged that the WMP’s report referenced a Maccabi match against West Ham that never took place, apparently due to an artificial intelligence hallucination.

Chief Constable Craig Guildford twice told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the WMP doesn’t use AI. He insisted the match had been identified through a Google search. But today he wrote to the committee apologising, and admitted the inclusion of the match “arose as a result” of an officer using the AI tool Microsoft Copilot. MPs are calling for Guildford’s resignation.

What did the commentators say?

“Despite denials at two separate hearings, it turns out they did use AI to produce their dodgy ‘intelligence’ dossier,” Conservative MP Nick Timothy, who has repeatedly criticised Guildford since the ban, posted on X.

This admission is “hugely embarrassing” for Guildford, said the BBC’s UK correspondent Daniel Sandford. But that is not his “biggest problem”. The WMP is accused of “mishandling intelligence” and then “doubling down” on the decision.

Behind that is the accusation that the safety advisory group “pandered to anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian voices within the community”, said the BBC’s Midlands correspondent Phil Mackie. That has “created a huge political headache” for both WMP and Birmingham City Council.

Each revelation “proves more damning” than the last, said The Wall Street Journal. They “confirm what many suspected” last October: WMP were “more afraid of local Islamists than they were of Israeli fans”. “In other words, British police gave local Islamists an antisemitic heckler’s veto.”

“Central to the WMP case” is what Dutch police told them, said The Guardian. The WMP says this is what “led them to believe Maccabi fans had been perpetrators of violence” after the Ajax match in 2024. But Dutch police appeared to contradict the WMP’s claim. Indeed, most of the victims of the violence were Maccabi fans.

The “narrative” spun by WMP – that the Israeli fans were too dangerous to host – “has slowly been unravelling”, said The Spectator’s assistant editor Madeline Grant. Hilariously, a phrase which kept coming up during the WMP officers’ evidence to the HAC was “an absence of intelligence”. “Of the truth of that there could be no doubt.” They “make Inspector Clouseau look like Poirot, Marple and Holmes rolled into one”.

“Something is rotten” in the WMP, said The Telegraph. Senior officers “misled the public” and “produced false intelligence in order to demonise Israeli fans, while disguising the real reason for the ban: fear of Islamist intimidation and a potential riot”.

A “secret dossier” proves the police “covered up threats against Israeli players” by “Asian youths looking for a fight”. The team were “constantly in danger of mob violence”. Police even consulted Green Lane Mosque before the match – “notorious for hosting radical preachers”. Guildford’s position “now looks unsustainable”.

Birmingham’s SAG also warrants scrutiny, said The Times. It includes several councillors who have “publicly opposed Israel’s participation in sports”. More broadly, the situation “gives an illuminating and depressing insight into how power is wielded in Britain today”. Guildford should admit the ban was “the result not of real intelligence but intense lobbying”. He “failed to discharge his duty with due impartiality and should resign”. “If not, the home secretary must show him the red card.”

What next?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who ordered the policing inspectorate to investigate the WMP’s handling, is considering the findings of the first part of their inquiry and delivered a statement to the House of Commons today, saying she no longer has confidence in Guildford.

Guildford, however, is “digging in” and will refuse to quit, according to The Times. “He wants due process, he won’t accept it,” a source told the paper. “He’s lawyering up.” Only Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner (who appointed Guildford), has the power to sack him – and Foster claims MPs on the home affairs select committee are “biased against Guildford”.