Dame Cressida Dick facing questions over ‘politically motivated’ investigation into Darren Grimes

From the Telegraph. I believe this to be politically motivated and a double standard at work, and I am glad that the MSM are sitting up and heeding the warning, at last. 

Dame Cressida Dick is set to be grilled by MPs over the Metropolitan Police’s decision to launch a “politically motivated” investigation into Darren Grimes.

There has been outrage over the decision to interview under caution the conservative commentator for broadcasting an interview with Dr David Starkey in which the historian used the phrase “damn blacks”.

David Starkey has said “resentments will fester” if public discussions on race are shut down as he issued an apology for claiming slavery was not genocide because there are “so many damn blacks” still around. The historian and presenter, 75, made the comments during an interview while addressing the Black Lives Matter movement.

In a lengthy statement in July Mr Starkey admitted his “bad mistake” has cost him “every distinction and honour acquired in a long career” but added that freedom of speech should not exclude conversations around race. 

The 27-year-old (Darren Grimes) is accused of stirring up racial hatred with the podcast, which was published on his Reasoned UK YouTube channel on June 30.

Tory MP Tim Loughton said he will raise the case with the Home Affairs Select Committee, on which he sits, when they meet on Wednesday.

“We are due to have Cressida Dick in in due course and this is another reason to question her,” Mr Loughton told the Telegraph. “It looks like a deeply political decision and we need to find out if it went all the way to the top and her fingerprints are on it.”

He said that the police are “shooting the messenger” and if Mr Grimes is guilty of anything it is “being an amateur interviewer” who did not pull Dr Starkey up on his remarks.

The fact that other offensive remarks have gone unquestioned by police, such as a comedienne encouraged people to “kill whitey” on the BBC, shows that this is “double standards”, Mr Loughton added.

“That is why this does seem to smack of a degree of political correctness and a singling out of Darren Grimes,” Mr Loughton said. “This seems to be a completely vexatious investigation and we need the police to be doing rather more important things.”

Since the Telegraph revealed that Mr Grimes had received a request to attend a police station to be interviewed under caution for an offence under the public order act, there have been widespread warnings that the investigation could have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

Sajid Javid, the former Home Secretary, described it as “absurd” whilst his replacement Priti Patel said that she could not comment on operational matters but “it’s important the law protects freedom of speech”.

The Public Order Act, which criminalises stirring up racial hatred, is intended to preserve public order, not regulate speech and debate. As the Crown Prosecution Service says in its own guidelines: “The purpose of public order law is to ensure that individual rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are balanced against the rights of others to go about their daily lives unhindered.”