Starmer has been forced into this. Don't let this inquiry become a new cover-up
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.
In Telford, Lucy Lowe died at 16 alongside her mother and sister when her abuser set fire to her home. She was pregnant when she was killed, and her death was used to threaten other children.
In Rotherham, the father of a 15-year-old rape victim was told by police officers the assault might mean she would 'learn her lesson'. The ordeal had been so brutal she required surgery. Children were 'doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight'; parents who tracked down their daughters and tried to rescue them were arrested by the police.
In Oxford, a child was raped by four men simultaneously; 'a red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet'.
And this was allowed to go on because officials were terrified of being called racist, terrified of stoking community tensions. In Manchester, police officers aware 'the offending target group were predominantly Asian males' were 'told to try and get other ethnicities'. In Telford, when the council became aware that taxi drivers were offering children rides for sex, it leapt into action and suspended licensing enforcement. In Rotherham, a police officer stated that the town would 'erupt' if the routine abuse of white children by Pakistani heritage men became public knowledge.
And remember: these are the stories that have come to light despite the state's reticence to investigate fully. As Conservative MP for Keighley Robbie Moore stated in the Commons in January, the scale of offending in Bradford, for instance, has still to be fully investigated; what is eventually uncovered may well 'dwarf' that uncovered in Rotherham.
Now it is vital to make sure that this does not become another cover-up. We need answers rapidly; we need names; we need the full publication of evidence, witnesses compelled to give testimony from police officers and council workers to ministers.
And we need to be honest about the sort of society we are today, and what we'd like to be. If the cover-up of mass rape of children is the price of preserving the status quo, it isn't worth paying.
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The crazy point, which fits in with the government's target but not the national interest, is that if we buy Norwegian gas, it does not come out of our 'carbon budget', as administered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Similarly, when we've shut down our entire domestic oil and gas operation and are buying the Canadian hydrocarbons that Carney is now so keen to boost, we will make the (unelected) Climate Change Committee — charged with setting our carbon budgets and invigilating our progress to purity — happy. Not so much the British voters, I fear, come our own general election in a few years' time.
