"It's a Feature, Not A Bug" - The Combined Authority of Staffordshire Police and Fire.
Free Speech Suppression Scandal Vindicates Legacy Opposition to Austerity-Era Power Grab
Staffordshire County is currently in the grip of a political scandal rapidly gaining national prominence over the attempt by the county’s police in suppressing the freedom of speech rights of an individual they are investigating in relation to official complaints of online harassment filed by the senior leadership of the county’s fire service. News about Robert Moss’s ordeal first broke on Saturday afternoon when the Telegraph published an article appropriately titled “Police used ‘Orwellian’ powers to gag firefighter in free speech row”, and was soon followed by other UK right-leaning news outlets.
In a reflection of just how politically divisive and partisan the topic of freedom of speech is in the UK, all mainstream news media coverage thus far of the scandal has been from right-leaning news outlets. Which must come as supremely ironic for Robert Moss as the main character in this story, considering that his personal politics is about as left wing as they come as a self-professed “Corbynista” and former union official; Moss was elected as the brigade secretary for the Fire Brigade Union (FBU) to represent unionised firefighters at Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) barely two months before he was unfairly dismissed by them.
Enough has been covered about the Orwellian treatment that Robert Moss found himself experiencing from Staffordshire Police, so The Narrative Shaper won’t be rehashing it all in detail. What however deserves more scrutiny is how this latest, massively-backfiring attempt by SFRS chief Rob Barber and his deputy Glynn Luznyj to suppress any further negative online chatter about their regional fire service threatens to not only drag a lot of national industry bodies such as the FBU, National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), and even HM Inspectorate for Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) into the fray, it also has the potential to trigger renewed though as-yes ineffective scrutiny about the glaring conflict of interest whose seed was first planted by Matthew Ellis.
Readers of The Narrative Shaper may well remember that the very first two articles written about SFRS featured Matthew Ellis who combined the local county police and fire service under one roof both metaphorically and in some cases literally during his time as the new Police, Fire, and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) in 2018. Back in those articles dating back to May 2025, the worst thing Ellis could have been insinuated or speculated in a negative manner over was the possibility that the high-profile death of a SFRS firefighter, Alec Elwell in January 2021 from Covid had causational links with politically-motivated pressure from Ellis pushing for the physical consolidation of Hanley Fire and Police stations at all cost, even if it meant violating existing rules of group gathering sizes and indoor working health and safety regimes.
What is not speculation but established fact with belated consequences playing out openly for all and sundry to witness in its grotesque glory, is how the Moss freedom of speech saga has exposed the true extent and implications of conflicts of interest that have come as a direct result of the deliberate power grab rammed through by Matthew Ellis and the Conservative Party against widespread opposition from Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent City Councils.
With the dissolution of the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Fire Authority as a direct result of Ellis’s consolidation drive, so much elected oversight power has now been exclusively consolidated within the single PFCC office that it begs the question of how anybody in such a role can check against any potential collusion between senior fire and police leadership in fixing and silencing dissenting or critical voices against them, made all the easier by the fact that both public service bodies share the same press response team.
This is not even apparently clear when one searches up “Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Press Office”. Notwithstanding the conflicting messaging easily dismissed as a flawed AI answer, the result presented by Google and displayed on the SFRS website give the impression that any press enquiries meant for SFRS would be directly sent to their Pirehill, Stone HQ via a dedicated email address.
So imagine The Narrative Shaper’s surprise when a quick phone call placed to the number listed elicited a reply from the duty officer monitoring the phone line that “we don’t actually run our own press office, everything is routed through Staffordshire County Council together with the Police, so you will need to resend your email you just sent to the contact@staffordshirefire.gov.uk email to another email.”
And what is this email in question? It is press.office@staffordshire.pnn.police.uk
Let that sink in. SFRS and Staffordshire Police are not only sharing the same press response team, the actual email in question is also explicitly a POLICE ONE given the “PNN” acronym within the email address.
As if more evidence is needed, this is the email footer banner at the bottom of the press statement released by Staffordshire Police regarding Moss’s arrest.
And here the aggravating nature of Robert Moss’s freedom of speech troubles with Staffordshire Police and SFRS really starts to crystallise.
Ordinarily, most people wouldn’t see it as an issue that the fire service and police are sharing the same press response team or processing press enquiries through the same email. Individuals who have knowledge of public service and government IT systems might have raised an eyebrow about a fire service press contact email being hosted on the Police National Network, but nothing more would have been thought of it.
But in the case of the ongoing free speech scandal kicked off by the overzealous actions of Staffordshire Police and SFRS, the conflict of interest goes that much deeper.
Because the leader and his deputy at SFRS decided it was perfectly fine for them to go to their Staffordshire Police counterparts to accuse someone whom they have already lost an unfair dismissal tribunal to years ago, of harassing them in the present day online.
Staffordshire Police then go to take Moss in for questioning with a dawn raid before releasing him later with bail conditions including the now-infamous "gag order" which forbids him from "posting any communications online or otherwise relating to this police investigation".
Had Moss not managed to successfully get this particular gag order bail condition rescinded, it would effectively mean that Staffordshire Police and SFRS would have had free rein to fabricate whatever narrative they wished, feed it to the press, and the Combined Press Centre would allow the Police to review every press enquiry meant for SFRS and hence know exactly which press line of enquiry they could obfuscate, refuse comment, or deny in their favour.
I mean, there could NEVER be a situation where there could be a conflict of interest with a regional police imposing a gag order on someone still in pre-charge investigations over online harassment accusations made by their fire service counterparts in the SAME region right?
"The guy we investigate? We make sure he can't talk. And since we share the same press contact email and response team, anybody sending questions to the fire boys we as the police get to read and gain insider information on what the media or anybody might be sniffing around for!"
And for anybody reading this and thinking that this must be just a one-off occurrence, think again. Because the exact same thing happened with a “Joint Strategy Comms Group” formed by West Midlands Police and Fire Service officers to coordinate efforts at narrative control and spiking negative news stories regarding the fake MBA scandal of the late Wayne Brown, Chief Fire Officer at West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) as far back as August 2023.
The only difference being that at least the West Midlands boys knew just how illegal and unethical their actions were and went to great lengths to keep it secret.
Whereas in Staffordshire, it is right out in the open.
Less a case of “the Emperor doesn’t know he’s wearing no clothes” and more of “the Emperor doesn’t need to care that he’s stark naked bollocks, because he is Emperor and his will is law!”
So where does this leave the whole farcical yet deeply malicious state of affairs? The only local government body that could possibly be left untouched by all this mess and hence be suitable as a oversight body investigating how deep the collusion between fire and police public service bodies have grown under the PFCC power structure set up by Matthew Ellis almost a decade ago would be the county councils.
But don’t hold your breath. For a while ago when The Narrative Shaper sent in a press enquiry to Staffordshire County Council about whether they would be taking any action or have any comments in response to the articles here describing legacy corruption and cover-ups at SFRS all the way up to the Staffordshire PFCC office.
The assumption held by The Narrative Shaper was that this might actually happen, considering it had recently fallen under majority control of Reform UK, which had made no secret about how Reform councillors and politicians would focus DOGE-style scrutiny on council spending and waste of public funds.
The answer in response was the epitome of blasé indifference. A truly English manner of giving a Gallic shrug.
