Serena Kennedy Sums Up All That’s Wrong With Modern Policing

Serena Kennedy was the first woman Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, itself a DEI appointment. She presided over the disastrous investigation into the Southport massacre.

From The European Conservative

By Paul Birch

The British Chief Constable’s cack-handed retirement press conference was a tedious recital of DEI cliches.

So, Serena Kennedy, the erstwhile Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, has retired. She is moving on and will doubtless soon be turning up on a well remunerated quango near you. And as befits the contemporary world of public sector senior leadership, where activism and a desire for celebrity collide, she held a press conference to sign off.  

Kennedy commences this curious event by saying that she had “thoroughly enjoyed” her time as the Chief Constable of Merseyside, but then checks herself when she realises she presided over the policing response to the Southport massacre, where Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls and injured a further ten in July 2024, the investigation of which Merseyside Police faced severe condemnation. 

After getting back on some sort of track, Kennedy then states that it had been an “honour and a privilege to lead the organisation and communities” through some of Merseyside’s Police’s darkest times, citing ‘communities’ in the plural rather than singular to emphasise her awareness of demographic diversity (as is the way of officers who have drunk the College of Policing ‘Kool-Aid’).

Then, in response to a rather bizarre question about whether she had ever been frightened whilst in post, Kennedy says she hadn’t, but that she had suffered “horrific” online abuse in the wake of the Southport attack. She highlights this ‘abuse’, which turns out to be calls for her resignation or sacking; i.e., legitimate criticism of a public servant in a high profile role at a time of massive public disquiet. It’s a standard activist defence mechanism, where negative sentiment is now labelled as hate or abuse in order to deflect perfectly justified criticism. 

Kennedy does remark that senior females with a public profile (notably, she doesn’t ever say ‘women’) are much more likely to be on the receiving end of personal abuse than their male colleagues. This I don’t doubt, and that is to be condemned, but then Kennedy goes fully into DEI bingo and states that this abuse is “in terms of their appearance, their sexuality, how they identify, their gender,” naturally labelling it as misogyny and opining that it’s getting worse, even within the police, despite the reality that over a third of police officers and 40% of chief constables in England and Wales are women. 

When asked about the notion of two-tier policing, Kennedy replies that it’s “absolute rubbish”. This is a curious answer, as Merseyside Police notably failed to release factual details about the man they had arrested on suspicion of carrying out the Southport attack, but did immediately release details of the individual alleged to have driven through crowds at Liverpool FC’s Premier League victory parade in May 2025. There have been many methods by which the mainstream media have tried to explain away this discrepancy, but we all know it’s because the commentariat don’t trust working class Brits to keep a lid on their anger. Interestingly, despite being the chief constable, Kennedy blamed a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) official for advising her not to release information relating to the Southport suspect. 

To rise to the rank of chief constable, Serena Kennedy would have had to overtly subscribe to the embracing of politicisation in modern policing, but even by College of Policing standards, she is a true believer. She has described Reform UK’s plans to abolish DEI policies as “ludicrous” and has expressed a nervousness that the United Kingdom is going backwards in relation to diversity and equality, seemingly oblivious to the cultural direction of travel of at least the last twenty years. 

In a recent interview with The Guardian (obviously), Kennedy comes across as condescending and disdainful of those who advance the now radical theory of treating everybody in a uniform fashion: 

“Because the lines that are being trotted out (my emphasis) around ‘we should treat everybody equally’. Yeah, we should. Everybody should experience the same quality of service from policing or the public sector, but unfortunately, they don’t.” 

You’re not wrong, Serena, you’re not wrong—just not in the way you think. 

She goes on to dismiss claims of migrants being more likely to commit crime, declaring: “I’m not seeing anything out of kilter. It’s just more newsworthy.” This is despite data revealing the fact that migrants are three times more likely to be arrested than Brits. 

Kennedy should, perhaps, have spent more time performing her core role rather than engaging in identity politics, as Merseyside Police suffers the sixth highest violent crime rate in the country, with some areas in Liverpool experiencing violence at more than 200% above the national average.

Kennedy is to be replaced by Rob Carden, formerly of Cumbria Constabulary, whose most memorable policing experience appears to have been Fatboy Slim’s concert on Brighton Beach in 2002. I hope Carden is the breath of fresh air that Merseyside Police clearly needs, although, as mentioned above, I doubt he would have attained such a senior rank without at least doffing his cap to the idols of luxury beliefs. But good luck to him. We shall see. 

Serena Kennedy’s abdication sums up all that’s wrong with the senior leadership in modern British policing. An ostentatious press conference full of cliché, psychobabble, with a bit of self-pity thrown in. In a police force area dogged by poverty, organised crime and having to live with the collective memory of the worst murderous outrage of modern times, the people (and constables) of Merseyside deserve far, far better.