Sir Ian Blair should think himself lucky. Rather than gently easing him out of his job, Boris Johnson could have left Sir Ian there to sweat out an inquiry into how lucrative police contracts were awarded to one of his friends

Now he's no longer in post, Sir Ian will not face the possibility of disciplinary proceedings over the 'cash for cronies' saga. Neither will he be there to face the cameras when the results of the inquest into the death of an innocent Brazilian resident of our capital are made known.

Jacqui Smith was quick to introduce politics into the arena, telling Boris publicly he should keep party politics out of policing without explaining precisely which Tory policy he was propogating.

In a decent world the Scotland Yard commissioner would have jumped before he was pushed. The buck has to stop somewhere and when you're the top man at Scotland Yard it stops with you.

Whoever was ultimately responsible for the tragic events that lead to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes on that tube train in 2005, it should have been Ian Blair who shouldered the blame and made an honourable exit.

First, Sir Ian hailed the police action as a great success, even though within Scotland Yard it seems to have been known that an innocent man had been killed. Maybe nobody bothered to tell Sir Ian.

And then from police sources came a succession of untruths about the events of that fateful morning and suggestions that cast doubt on the character of the innocent, now dead, Brazilian.

How painful must that have been for his grieving family. This was a young man who did not vault over a turnstile, was not wearing a bulky jacket with wires sticking out of it and whose picture, it has since been claimed, was computer enhanced for publication to make him look more like a known and wanted suspected terrorist.

If that wasn't enough to make Sir Ian want to crawl away in shame, consider the two innocent Muslim men whose home in Forest Gate was entered by armed police while they were asleep in bed. One was shot in the shoulder and has since mercifully recovered.

On learning his officers had entered the wrong home, traumatising and shooting the innocent inhabitants, Sir Ian's reaction might have been to apologise profusely and offer some compensation.

Fat chance. Computers taken from the scene were examined and we learned that allegedly pornography had been downloaded on to one of them. As if that had anything to do with the price of fish!! No charges were brought.

Sir Ian might say with justification that he is not privy to every action by every member of his Force - or service, as he prefers to call it. But he bears ultimate responsibility, not only for his officers' actions but for the disinformation so cynically leaked into the public domain after two shameful events.

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