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As of writing, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is refusing to hold a public inquiry into the ‘grooming gangs’ which operated in English towns including but not limited to Rotherham, Oxford and Oldham. This is despite coming under intense pressure in the last few days to do so. It was the main headline on BBC Radio 4 at 6pm and has dominated both the mainstream media and social media for at least the last 48 hours.
Tweets by Elon Musk focused international attention and pressure on Starmer to order an inquiry. The politics of inquiries has been satirised before both on Yes, Minister and The Thick of It (both essential watching for anyone who wants to understand the interplay between politics and the media) but the political significance of ordering one cannot be under-estimated, which is presumably why Starmer is refusing.
It amazes me that Starmer has held out for this long, and that he continues to dig his feet in. It makes me wonder just what there is to hide. The ‘line’ (and it will be a line briefed to all the sad Labour MPs who now must go on Radio 4 and Newsnight to defend the PM) is that there have been other reviews and reports, with reliance being placed on the very expensive and lengthy Jay Report.
It is true to say that there have been local reports into the child rape scandal, a standout being the one ordered by Andy Burnham in Manchester. I talked about the absolutely shocking findings of that report here.
There was also a 202-page report published which found that Oldham Council failed to protect children from sexual exploitation. I talked about that here.
The BBC went heavy on the Jay report yesterday evening. They shamefully spoke of the scandal as involving the ‘befriended, grooming and raping’ of children by gangs of mainly Pakistani men. What really occurred was the gang raping, sodomising, trafficking and prostituting of white, working-class girls, by gangs of mostly Pakistani Muslim men.
As previous reports have shown, reporting these men to the police was a waste of the girl’s time. These gangs operated with total impunity. The Manchester report found, ‘At least 57 young girls are thought to have been exploited by a paedophile network based in south Manchester. They were hooked on drugs, groomed, raped and emotionally broken – one youngster, aged fifteen, died.’
Or consider Sophie and how she was treated by the police, “Sophie went to Oldham police station to report being raped by an Asian man in October 2006. The police weren’t bothered about a 12-year-old girl coming to report a rape. She was told to come back when she was ‘not drunk’. Unbelievably, Sophie was then abducted by a man who was also visiting the police station, and raped in a vehicle by two men, before being taken to a house and raped multiple times by five different men.”
Given the above, and there are thousands of such cases, why is Starmer refusing a full public inquiry and holding out under so much pressure for so long? I cannot recall a Prime Minister holding out under this kind of pressure for as long as Starmer has. This is even though (as depicted in Yes, Minister) inquiries are usually seen as a way to kick an issue into the long grass. What’s more is that Sir Keir is a human rights silk (KC, or Senior Counsel in Ireland) and I can tell you there is nothing, absolutely nothing that a human rights barrister likes more than a lengthy public inquiry. The fact that a lot of human rights barristers would be quids in for years is surely an added bonus for Starmer.
Politically this is costing Starmer a lot of capital. The Times of London’s lead editorial called for a national public inquiry. Somehow, Starmer has managed to put himself against the interests of girls and women who have been brutalised by gang rapists. These are the ‘optics’ as they say in the game.
The ‘line’ that Labour is sticking to is the first, Elon Musk is the evil and second, we have had all the inquiries we want, thanks very much, especially the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) lead by Professor Jay. But Rotherham garners a sole mention in her 468-page report and the gangs in Telford are not referenced.
The other Labour line is that Jay’s 20 recommendations should be implemented – ‘we need action.’ Never mind that you can do both, – implement the recommendations AND have an inquiry.
Before I tell you why I suspect Starmer is holding out a few words on all the sad and pathetic Labour MPs who have been filling the airwaves, ordered out to ‘hold the line’ and refuse to give these girls the justice they require, namely a public inquiry of their own. Over the years people have asked why I never went into politics, and this is a good reason why. Because when you are a politician, you must stick to the ‘party line’ no matter how ridiculous. That means if some party hack tells you that having an inquiry into child rape is “Far Right” then that is the kind of horseshit you have to say on live TV. I honestly think part of them must die inside. In fact, over the years I have been asked to go on the telly and defend some moron or other, the producers believing that I’d ‘stick to the line.’ I refused because I wanted to be able to sleep at night.
Anyway, I don’t think Sir Keir Starmer was involved in any major cover up while he was Director of Public Prosecutor. I am not convinced a smoking gun will be found. But Starmer doesn’t want the terms ‘Muslim rapists’ and ‘white girls targeted’ in the headlines day after day, which is exactly what you would get if you had a public inquiry. There are a lot Muslim votes on the line.
Public inquiries, although sometimes a delaying tactic, are ultimately difficult to control. Some pesky lawyer will start asking some police officer difficult questions, under oath, and it will emerge than these Muslim rape gangs had the run of places such Rotherham, Oldham and Oxford and they went utterly unchallenged because it would wreck ‘community relations.’ The ability to of Muslim rape gangs to brutalise whoever they damn well liked, which was nearly always white working class girls, was critical to maintaining ‘community relations.’
Starmer doesn’t want to be remembered as the Prime Minister who set up the inquiry which blew the house of multiculturalism down. He doesn’t want to be the one that exploded the myth of the ‘integration miracle’ that is the United Kingdom. That’s on a far bigger scale than some lying police officer. These are as John said previously, foundational liberal myths.
No British Prime Minister wants some lawyer asking some tough questions about the Islamic faith. That could lead to the kind of facts and truth a Prime Minister could do without, thanks very much. That’s why Starmer is holding out on giving an inquiry to the one group of people who deserve an inquiry more than anyone else: the raped and brutalised girls of British towns, towns where predatory gangs who treated girls like rubbish ruled. You do wonder how they sleep at night.
Original article: Gript
