by Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Telegraph
A generation of politicians and officials abandoned children who needed their help to avoid ‘tensions’. It’s time they faced a reckoning
In January, Sir Keir Starmer accused opposition MPs expressing concern over grooming gangs of “amplifying what the far-Right is saying” and “jumping on a bandwagon”. Having fought tooth and nail against any public inquiry into the scandal for months, he now appears to have conceded they were right all along, announcing that he has accepted Baroness Louise Casey’s recommendation of a full statutory inquiry.
So that’s that. Judged by his own words, the Prime Minister is jumping on a far-Right bandwagon. It demonstrates how absurd his reflexive statement was, but it also illustrates exactly how this scandal was permitted to go on for so long: an instinctive urge to protect the narrative of a cohesive multicultural nation built through immigration, with a few far-Right malcontents, rather than a deeply divided society where neutral enforcement of the law could lead to chaos on the streets.
The reason the grooming gangs were not dealt with earlier is simple: a generation of politicians and state officials acted as if it was in essence better for society if children were raped by these gangs and officials covered it up, than if the state was to act to stop the violence and risk “tensions” between communities.
Read that again. And now read what they allowed to happen.