Boris Johnson's crude joke about undercover police sex with activists

The growing furore around undercover policeman Mark Kennedy’s sex with female activists has led to claims that such “promiscuity” tactics were sanctioned by senior officers and calls for a judicial inquiry. With activists claiming they were unable to give informed consent to sex with Metropolitan Police officers, a member of the Met’s governing body making crass jokes about the affair — in public — would rightly be considered scandalous.

But this is precisely what the most senior member of the London Police Authority, Boris Johnson, does in his £250,000 column for the Telegraph today:

It wasn’t even the news about the undercover officers – you know, the undercover officers who have been getting under the covers with their targets in order to penetrate their – er – networks more effectively.

Boris is nothing if not a Houdini figure when it comes to escaping blowback from his gaffes, playing his Get Out Of Jail Free card early by stating this was a ”reprehensible way to carry on”. In the same sentence, however, the London Mayor then appears to justify the practice with reference to, erm, Ian Fleming novels:

you have to admit that such behaviour has been sanctioned and glorified on every page of James Bond, Britain’s number one post-war security professional.

If this was another member of the MPA they would be facing calls for their resignation.