SIR IAN BLAIR, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has admitted he may soon be forced to resign over the shooting of an innocent Brazilian man on the London Underground.

Britain’s top policeman told a private gathering of business leaders and officials last week that he might have to go “fairly soon” over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Describing the pressure he faced over the botched operation, he said: “Where does resignation end? Of course, it might end fairly soon.”

He added: “I’d much rather resign than be pushed.”

Blair’s comments, made to the Windsor Leadership Trust, indicate his recognition that the pressure on him is building to a critical point. At the time of the shooting he considered resigning but ruled it out.

Senior police officers say the inquiry into the operation will reveal a “horror story” when it is completed before Christmas.One senior insider said: “He (Blair) has obviously been damaged. His own self-confidence has been damaged. You can see that he looks visibly older.”

Blair disclosed at the meeting that his personal role in the affair was now being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Blair tried to block an immediate IPCC inquiry into the shooting at Stockwell Tube station.

In a letter to the Home Office, written just hours after the shooting, he said he should be able to suspend the legal requirement for an inquiry on national security grounds. He was overruled by Sir John Gieve, the Home Office’s most senior civil servant.

In his lecture on “leadership”, delivered last Wednesday, Blair indicated that mistakes had been made and that his officers had failed to stop certain information circulating in the media. This is thought to be a reference to the incorrect belief that de Menezes had been wearing a bulky coat and had vaulted the barrier when entering the station.

Blair also said that allowing subordinates to “make mistakes” was a key strength of a good manager.

He maintained that he had not tried to cover up the truth about the shooting. Lawyers representing the de Menezes family have said there was a “fatal delay” in starting the official inquiry.

Yesterday a Scotland Yard spokesman said Blair had made it clear in the speech that “it would be arrogant not to consider the issue of resignation in such circumstances but stressed he had no plans to resign”.

Those present last week included Lord Phillips, the new lord chief justice, and Sir Brian Burridge, the commander of British forces in the recent Gulf war.

At least 10 officers involved in the shooting are understood to have been served with police disciplinary notices. They include the marksmen from CO19, who fired 11 bullets at de Menezes after he boarded a train at Stockwell. Senior officers up to the rank of deputy assistant commissioner may also face manslaughter charges.

Blair has said he did not find out until the day after the shooting — on the morning of July 22 — that his officers had killed an innocent man. Five hours after the shooting he said it was “directly linked” to the hunt for the would-be suicide bombers of July 21.

On July 23 Blair was still praising the Met for “playing out of its socks”, but at 5pm that day Scotland Yard issued a statement in which it admitted the shot man was not connected to the plot.

As the IPCC examines whether Blair made misleading public statements, it has emerged that some of his most senior officers were aware by the mid-afternoon of July 22 that de Menezes was innocent. A senior officer told The Sunday Times that Blair should have been in a position to know what his officers had found out by then.

Another insider said: “Serious doubts about whether they had shot the right man emerged very soon after the incident. All they had to do was look at the identity documents in his wallet to see that he wasn’t a terrorist.”

The commissioner is also likely to face difficulties over his decision to activate Operation Kratos, the secret guidelines which authorise police marksmen to shoot suspected suicide bombers in the head.

The policy was drawn up by a special terrorism committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers in 2003. Many senior officers are, however, privately concerned about the legal basis of the policy.

Blair continues to defend the guidelines in public, but many other police chiefs have distanced themselves from the policy and several forces plan never to use it.

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