Ministers facing questions over Met’s VIP protection for Taylor Swift

James Cleverly asks Yvette Cooper if she intervened to ensure popstar’s London concerts went ahead

Ministers are facing questions over whether they intervened to grant Taylor Swift VIP police protection in order to stop her cancelling her London concerts.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, wrote to his opposite number, Yvette Cooper, on Wednesday to ask whether she had personally made representations.

Swift performed at Wembley in August, days after she pulled out of three planned concerts in Vienna after police foiled a terror plot. The popstar and her entourage were provided with a police convoy by the Special Escort Group (SEG), a specialist unit of the Metropolitan police which is ordinarily reserved for the royal family and senior politicians.

Swift’s mother, who doubles as her manager, wanted a police escort from where the singer was staying to Wembley stadium, the Guardian understands, and threatened to cancel the London concerts if one was not provided. One source with knowledge of the row said: “The mum made a series of security demands given what had happened in Vienna.”

The Met initially declined, believing it was not necessary, leading to representations from the Home Office and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. According to the Sun, who first reported the story, Cooper stressed to the Met that the concerts’ cancellation would be economically damaging and embarrassing but the police did not budge.

One source said an operational risk assessment was carried out by the Met “not on what Taylor Swift wanted but on risk grounds, given recent developments” in Vienna, while another from those pressing the Met to act stressed there was no interference in the Met’s operational independence, but added: “They don’t listen to us at the best of times, why would they listen to us on this?”

In his letter, Cleverly asked Cooper whether any ministers spoke to the Met chief, Mark Rowley, about Swift’s police protection and whether they accepted tickets to her concerts before or after decisions were made about the security arrangements.

Khan is among several Labour politicians who accepted free tickets to Swift’s Eras Tour shows this year. It is understood that Khan’s tickets were offered before discussions about the security arrangements and were not provided by Swift.

Cooper also attended one of Swift’s Wembley concerts as the guest of her husband, the former Labour minister Ed Balls, who was offered free tickets by the chief executive of Universal Music.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, insisted that the arrangements had been “an operational decision for the police” and not in the power of the home secretary or other ministers.

The mayor of London and the home secretary both have oversight of the Met. One source said there was “concern” that elements within the police had leaked “to embarrass the Labour government and mayor”.

A source close to the home secretary said: “The London Taylor Swift concerts in August came immediately after the cancellation of her Vienna concerts, after the discovery of a terror plot which the CIA’s deputy director said was designed to kill ‘tens of thousands’ of attenders.

“We can make categorically clear that all operational decisions were made by the Metropolitan police and they do not discuss security arrangements.”

A Met spokesperson said: “The Met is operationally independent. Our decision making is based on a thorough assessment of threat, risk and harm and the circumstances of each case. It is our longstanding position that we don’t comment on the specific details of protective security arrangements.”

Friday Motivation

Apples Never Fall review: Annette Bening drama lacks the crunch of a Pink Lady, but it’s twists and turns galore

There are but a few authors who have their own universes within the modern television landscape. Agatha Christie, of course, gets a new adaptation every Christmas. There’s also David Nicholls and Kate Atkinson, or any number of thriller writers, from Gillian Flynn to the indefatigable Harlan Coben. But none have made quite the impression, in recent years, of Australian author Liane Moriarty, whose books have spawned a number of blockbuster sagas, the latest of which, Apples Never Fall, turns up this week on BBC One.

Joy Delaney (Annette Bening) has gone missing. She has recently retired from the tennis academy she ran with her volatile husband Stan (Sam Neill), and her disappearance sparks the concern of her children: anxious Amy (Alison Brie), macho Troy (Jake Lacy), disenchanted Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner), and unreliable Brooke (Essie Randles). Has somebody murdered their mother? And is that “somebody” their father, given that Joy may have been seeking a divorce? Or is Joy’s vanishing somehow linked to the sudden appearance, many months earlier, of a mysterious young woman, Savannah (Georgia Flood), who becomes a cuckoo in the Delaney nest?

If you know Moriarty’s work, you’ll know where this is going. Twists and turns, misdirection and obfuscation, not to mention lashings of family drama. This is the third big-budget adaptation of Moriarty’s work, beginning with 2017’s Big Little Lies, and followed up by Amazon’s Nine Perfect Strangers as the meat in this hammy sandwich. Though they are unified by A-list talent and high production values, the creative ambitions have been progressively stifled. Where Big Little Lies was shot with a vaguely artistic eye, Apples Never Fall is your run-of-the-mill sepia-infused thriller. Even the title is clunky, and the dialogue is often similarly stilted. “Everyone says they want a doctor in the family,” the sibylline Savannah observes. “But I think having someone in the geosciences around is way more interesting.”

All the same, how bad can a show with Annette Bening, Sam Neill and Alison Brie really be? And that is the key to Apples Never Fall. Each episode follows a different Delaney as they navigate both the family dynamics and the muckraking presence who will resurface long-buried secrets. They all glow in the south-Florida light (a relocation from the novel’s Australian setting, though the series is still filmed there), looking preternaturally beautiful. But that’s something that unifies the Moriartiverse: glamorous people, in glamorous settings, behaving slightly repulsively towards one another. And while no one is departing much from their established archetypes – Lacy is now the go-to Hollywood bro, while Brie has played every bug-eyed neurotic going – it all fits together neatly, like a puzzle.

“It kind of felt easy being a martyr,” Joy confesses, in flashback. “Maybe I let myself down.” And for all that Apples Never Fall delivers reliable tropes – the missing woman, the mysterious stranger, the rival from the past who’s back on the scene – its core concern is how a dysfunctional marriage begets a dysfunctional family. The script, from showrunner Melanie Marnich, is frequently heavy-handed, but there’s enough in the material to keep viewers’ interest for seven episodes. And while it doesn’t stick the landing in the same way as Big Little Lies, the rug-pull in the seventh chapter manages, in tennis terms, to be a comfortable put-away, even if it’s not quite a smash.

Apples Never Fall exists in the middle of a Venn diagram between full-blown murder mystery thrillerdom, and an almost soap operatic depiction of crumbling dynasties. It is an emerging portmanteau genre, designed to unite men and women, young and old, in something mildly exciting, mildly titillating and mildly relatable. The result is a show that lacks the crunch of a Pink Lady, but still has the mellow tones and summer flavourings of a Golden Delicious.