The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban was a sop to Islamic sectarians

For me, one clip says it all. There sat a clammy-looking Craig Guildford, beleaguered chief constable of West Midlands Police, addressing the camera with all the joie de vivre of a hostage appearing in a proof-of-life video.

‘Salam alaikum’, he said, addressing Birmingham’s Muslim community in August 2024, his nerves – or else his general dimwittery – showing in his mangled pronunciation. ‘Thank you to the leaders and elders [who] have afforded me this opportunity to speak to you personally.’

Wait, what? Who’s in charge here? It shouldn’t be for the chief constable to grovel before ‘leaders and elders’ for allowing him to address the citizens who pay his wages. We are a liberal democracy, not a tribal society. Or at least we used to be.

Welcome to the results of Britain’s decades-long experiment with the benighted doctrine of multiculturalism, which has led to the Balkanisation of great swathes of the country along sectarian lines.

In the old days, every citizen was equal in the eyes of the law, to be policed even-handedly, without fear or favour. Today, however, especially in parts of the land dominated by Muslim populations, officers must engage with self-appointed ‘leaders and elders’, who tend to show all the hallmarks of insularity and fundamentalism. In fact, they often act remarkably like members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that in Birmingham, Yorkshire and elsewhere, the mullahs now call the shots. Consider, for instance, the municipal Christmas tree that was erected in the centre of Bradford last year. Well, I say Christmas tree: the authorities saw fit to rename it a ‘multicultural tree’, which was supposedly a ‘symbol of the amazing way in which the city of Bradford and district positively embrace diversity’.

The tone of the (badly punctuated) apologia pegged to the side of the fern was nothing short of emetic. The tree ‘stands for the many communities and businesses that live and work together’, it pleaded. ‘In a world often divided, the tree symbolises our united city of Bradford, the baubles represent our people and businesses and shows the true power of an inclusive city’ (sic).

I think I just did a little sick. The thing felt like one long grovel, seemingly designed to beg the local Muslim population to indulge the presence of a non-Islamic tradition – shorn of all its Christian significance – on their territory. (Ironically, Bradford is 33.4 per cent Christian, according to the last Census, and only 30.5 per cent Muslim, yet the smaller of those groups seems to wear the trousers.)

Could you imagine the boys in blue striking such a subservient position towards any other minority in Britain? Sikhs, maybe? Jews? Buddhists? Me neither. Which brings us back to the West Midlands, the dysfunctional societal soup in which bobs the obsequious and flaccid dumpling of Craig Guildford, who surely cannot possibly hang on to his position much longer.

Another video for you: this time showing Nick Timothy, Conservative MP for West Suffolk, who grew up near Aston Villa, outside the ground during the unrest that accompanied the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv last year, even though the Israeli fans – supposedly the source of the danger – had been banned.

‘Officer, can you take this dog away?’, one of the many bearded activists said while pointing at Timothy. Within seconds, a female police officer was squaring up to the MP. ‘Are we going to have an adult conversation or are you going to move on?’, she matronised. Shamefully, the freely elected parliamentarian found himself duly ‘moved on’. That also says it all.

Well, if Britain is to remain Britain for very much longer, last weekend’s Sunday Times provided what must surely prove the metaphorical nail in the Gollumish chief constable’s coffin. Leaked minutes from a local meeting gave rise to the following timeline.

At a behind-closed-doors meeting of Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG), held on 7 October 2025, West Midlands Police admitted that they favoured banning the Israeli fans ‘in the absence of intelligence’. In other words, with no evidence at all. Could this have had anything to do with the petition launched by local ‘Gaza independent’ MP Ayoub Khan – who could also perhaps be described as a ‘community leader’ or ‘elder’ – to boycott the Israeli team?

At the meeting, two Israelophobic councillors, Waseem Zaffar and Mumtaz Hussain, both of whom had publicly supported a boycott of Maccabi Tel Aviv because the team are Israeli, did not recuse themselves. Of course they didn’t.

On 9 October, an official at Birmingham City Council wrote to West Midlands Police to request a ‘slightly more clear rationale’ for banning the fans, as it could be ‘considered as anti-Jewish sentiment’. You think?

A week-and-a-half later, as scrutiny mounted, West Midlands Police claimed that they had now acquired ‘significant intelligence indicating potential for disorder involving [Maccabi Tel Aviv] based on recent fixtures’, particularly following ‘notable unrest’ in Amsterdam. How convenient!

This ‘significant intelligence’, however, did not pass the smell test. At the 7 October meeting, police had correctly said that 1,200 Dutch officers had been deployed in Amsterdam. The new document, however, inflated that figure to 5,000. Similarly, the threat to Muslims had originally been described as ‘low’, the threat to Jews as ‘medium’, and the threat to Israeli fans ‘high’. Now, outrageously, the scale was reversed, with the threat to Israeli fans downgraded to ‘medium’, the threat to Muslims upgraded to ‘high’, and the threat to local Jews erased entirely. This supported the implausible narrative that the Israelis were the threat, not the local Muslim thugs, many of whom followed an imam who had vowed to show the Maccabi fans ‘no mercy’.

At a meeting on 23 October, police apparently gilded the lily further, claiming that Israelis in Amsterdam had engaged in ‘hate crimes, serious assaults including throwing random members of the public… into the river’. This was ridiculed by Dutch authorities. Chief constable Guildford, however, insisted that the tales were based on a Zoom call with three Dutch officers, which was mysteriously not minuted.

Last but by no means least, as the row raged, the original admission of the ‘absence of intelligence’ was redacted from official documents (though it was leaked in full to The Sunday Times).

Now, you don’t need to be a Cluedo genius to work out what has been going on here. West Midlands Police, the local MP, and various Islamist activists and outriders have been engaged in a campaign that recalls Freud’s ‘kettle logic’ argument: ‘Firstly, I’ve never borrowed a kettle from you; secondly, your kettle was already leaking when you lent it to me; and thirdly, it was intact when I gave it back to you.’

That’s not even the worst of it. Chillingly, at the height of the row, polling by YouGov revealed that the public had been resoundingly convinced by this collaboration between the police and the local Islamic activists, with 42 per cent supporting the ban.

There you have it: a microcosm of one of the deepest and most disturbing challenges facing our country. And it’s only just beginning. In the long run, if the courageous efforts of Nick Timothy, Ian Austin and others fail to bring the chief constable to justice, and the matter is swept under the carpet, our streets are as good as lost, and Britain with them.

Jake Wallis Simons is author of Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself.