Former Met Commissioner Lord Ian Blair Dies at 72

Lord Ian Blair, who led London’s Metropolitan Police Service from 2005 to 2008 and was a central figure in the city’s security response to the 7/7 suicide bombings, has died aged 72. His death was announced by Christ Church College at the University of Oxford, where he studied and later became an honorary student. Blair’s tenure as commissioner coincided with some of the most testing moments for UK policing in recent decades. Five months after he took office, four coordinated bomb attacks on London’s transport network killed 52 people. Two weeks later, Met firearms officers fatally shot Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes after mistaking him for a terror suspect, an incident that triggered a wide-ranging inquiry and criticism of the force’s procedures, though Blair himself was cleared of wrongdoing. Born in Chester in 1953, Blair joined the Met through its graduate scheme in 1974 and rose rapidly, also serving in Surrey and Thames Valley police forces. He stepped down as commissioner in 2008 after a public disagreement with then-London Mayor Boris Johnson and was created a crossbench life peer in 2010.