"Plebgate" (also known as "Plodgate" and "Gategate") was a British political scandal which started in September 2012. The trigger was an altercation between Conservative MP and Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell and police officers on duty outside Downing Street. Leaked police logs, later apparently backed up by eyewitness evidence, suggested that Mitchell had sworn at police officers and called them "plebs" (a pejorative word signifying someone of low social class) when they refused to open the main gate for him as he attempted to leave with his bicycle, telling him to walk through the adjacent pedestrian gate instead. Mitchell apologised, stating that he had used bad language but denied using the words claimed and in particular calling police officers "plebs". However, finding his position untenable amid the media storm surrounding the incident, he resigned from the post of Chief Whip a month later.
The story returned to the headlines a few months later, when CCTV footage was released to the media which threw into doubt the police version of events and when it was revealed that an email purporting to be from a member of the public, which had backed up the accounts given in the official police log, was actually sent by a serving police officer who had not been present at the scene. The Metropolitan Police investigated the incident as Operation Alice.
The affair was revisited again in October 2013, after a report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) concluded that three officers had given a false account of a meeting they had with Mitchell at his constituency office in October 2012, and that the findings of a subsequent investigation had been changed just in time to recommend no disciplinary action be taken against them. After both Home Secretary Theresa May and Prime Minister David Cameron criticised the conduct of the officers involved, the officers issued a statement in which they apologised for misleading the public. At the Old Bailey, PC Keith Wallis subsequently admitted falsely claiming to have witnessed the incident and was sentenced to 12 months in prison.
Once the criminal trials had concluded, Mitchell sued for libel. The judge ruled "on the balance of probabilities" that Mitchell had said "the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same including the politically toxic word pleb."
Incident and initial aftermath
On the evening of Wednesday 19 September 2012, at about 7:30 pm, Mitchell left the office of the Chief Whip at 9 Downing Street, the street containing the official residence of the Prime Minister (Number Ten) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Number 11), which is under heavy security and has been gated since the 1980s. Mitchell, who was cycling, swore when a police officer told him to exit through the pedestrian gate rather than by the main gate. The official police log of the incident states that Mitchell said:
Best you learn your fucking place. You don't run this fucking government ... You're fucking plebs.
The log reported Mitchell as saying:
you haven’t heard the last of this.
On Thursday 20 September, before the incident was publicly reported, an email was also received by John Randall, MP, the Government's Deputy Chief Whip. It appeared to offer independent corroboration of the version of events in the police log. The author stated that he was a member of the public who had been present outside the gates of Downing Street at the time, with his nephew from Hong Kong; and that the incident had been witnessed by other tourists nearby. This email later proved to be false, and in fact came from a police officer who had not been present.
These allegations became known in the media as "Plebgate". Members of the West Midlands branch of the Police Federation of England and Wales, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and a leader column in The Daily Telegraph called on Mitchell to resign or be sacked.
The affair has occasionally been referred to as "Plodgate" ("plod" being British slang for a police officer). The Week magazine called it "Gategate", which was picked up by BBC News and Business Insider, with the latter saying that this use of the -gate suffix for scandals had taken "the practice to its logical conclusion" as a "new height of absurdity".