How the career of the British bobby is changing

BEFORE he first put on his uniform, Paul Clements had never seen a bar fight, still less joined in one. Fisticuffs had sometimes seemed inevitable when he was negotiating bail-outs at the European Commission, but they never broke out. “I hadn’t had any exposure to the police except for a speeding fine in 1996,” he says. But after only a few weeks as a constable and a year’s training, the former Bank of England official was put in charge of 100-odd cops.

He is one of a new breed of policemen who could reshape the service. The new home secretary, Sajid Javid, gave his first big speech to the conference of the Police Federation, a cops’ union, this week, assuring officers that he would be “standing with you”. But reforms carried out by a previous home secretary—Theresa May, who is now prime minister—could soon overturn the service’s make-up.