by Tom Slater, spiked
The ‘grooming’ scandal is the most grotesque example yet of Labour’s abandonment of the working class.
It was a good day to bury shameful news, I guess. Just 45 minutes before the UK parliament broke for recess yesterday, Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips announced a watering down of an already very watered down set of local inquiries into the scourge of rape gangs. Perhaps they hoped Elon Musk would be too preoccupied with the trade war to fire up his X account.
We were promised, in January, five local inquiries in areas where the gangs were known to operate, after Labour rejected calls for a full-blown national inquiry complete with statutory powers. Now, there will only be one local inquiry, in Oldham, while other councils will be offered more ‘flexible’ – that is, even more toothless – alternatives. We are decades into this scandal now, and betrayal is still being piled upon betrayal.
Yes, it’s been more than 20 years since Ann Cryer, then Labour MP for Keighley, first raised the alarm about groups of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men preying on poor and working-class white girls in her constituency, only to be dismissed as a racist. Yesterday in parliament, Tory MP Robbie Moore, Cryer’s successor in the patch, was apoplectic. He’s long been calling for a Bradford-wide rape-gang inquiry, only to be rebuffed by the local authority. Why does the government think a looser, seemingly opt-in, approach will force Bradford Council, or any other council, to act, he asked, given they have a vested interest in keeping the truth hidden?