'In Rochdale we know all too well the trauma girls suffered from grooming gangs'
In Rochdale, we know all too well the terrible trauma suffered by our local girls at the hands of evil grooming gangs.
That's why I strongly welcome Keir Starmer's decision to order a national inquiry into this sick crime, with tough powers to force witnesses to give evidence.
On Friday, we had the latest convictions of a child rape gang, made up of men from Rochdale of Pakistani heritage who preyed on girls in the early 2000s.
The contrast between the bravery of the women who gave evidence in court and the cowardice of their abusers was stark.
The way these paedophiles treated the teenage girls as slaves for their sexual perversion was disgusting enough.
But what will also anger many people was the prosecution lawyer's statement in court that the abuse had taken place "under the noses of social workers and others who should have done far more to protect them".
That's why we need this statutory inquiry - to hold accountable anyone in any position of authority who knew what was going on and failed to act.
The inquiry should now follow the evidence, wherever it leads. No political party, no councillor, no police officer, no social worker, no racial group should be spared the spotlight of transparency. There can be no cover ups.
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The Prime Minister has a strong record in taking action to lock up the child rapists in our town.
It was his decision as Director of Public Prosecutions to change the way cases are built for court, allowing these working class girls the day in court they deserved, that paved the way for a string of prosecutions.
And when Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asked in January for Louise Casey to conduct a national audit into grooming, it was clear that she wanted a fiercely independent expert to dig into it.
It sounds like Baroness Casey's findings will be as no-nonsense as all her previous work.
I hope the new inquiry will now deliver the justice our girls have been denied for far too long.
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Recalling his time volunteering for Harris's ill-starred election campaign, he says: 'I would sometimes be on conference calls and people would talk about a policy or message and say, 'Do we think this is going to work? Do we think this is going to be effective?' I would basically say, well, let me go surfing and find out. 'Nobody else said, 'Oh, let me go talk to my working class friend,' because Democrats often do not have working friends who don't have college degrees. The people who are in office, and the people who work for those who are in office, almost all are college educated and almost all their friends are college educated. 'You have Democrats sit in rooms where literally everyone has a college degree, and they say, how come people without college degrees don't feel like we're thinking about them or that we're welcoming to them? Well, look around the room.' Litt acknowledges that he is writing about a friendship with one other white man, the smallest possible sample size, making it hard to draw sociological conclusions about working class people of colour. But he also notes that Republicans have sought to 'repolarise' the country on educational and culture war lines while making race less important in determining how people vote. Polls show that Trump did make big inroads with Latino men and, to a lesser extent, with African American men. Litt says: 'I don't know that race stopped mattering but I do think there was a Democratic view that race mattered so much more than anything else, especially for people who are not white. 'What we saw is very clearly no, that's not true and was maybe not the most empirically based attitude to have. The base of the Democratic party is still Black women but I do think there was some some of that racial depolarisation.' Democrats do have a strong policy agenda for blue collar workers but have failed to communicate it, Litt argues. His friendship with Kappler will not explain everything. But he offers it as a start for a party that somehow allowed Trump – a millionaire businessman who cuts taxes for the rich – to steal its clothes. 'If you had asked me three years ago, do you have a lot to learn from your brother-in-law, I would have said not really, and one of the things I had to learn was that's a deeply obnoxious attitude. I'm still a professional Democrat – I can still be plenty annoying – but I think I am less self-righteous than I used to be. And it turns out life is more fun and you're more persuasive that way. So why not?'
