Morning Call: The grooming gangs fallout
Reluctance to hold a public inquiry into the scandal has made the government look like it has something to hide.
Good morning, Rachel here.
It’s one of those days in Westminster where there’s so much news it’s hard to know where to look. At the G7 (or G6...), which Donald Trump has left early, leaving other world leaders in Canada scrambling to de-escalate the situation between Israel and Iran? At the US-UK trade deal signed last night, which is good news for Britain but leaves a lot of unanswered questions? At the Assisted Dying bill as it lurches towards a third reading on Friday, and Gordon Brown makes an intervention urging MPs to reject it? At abortion, with the possibility that MPs this evening might vote for full decriminalisation by changing a 164-year-old law? Or at the continued fall-out from Louise Casey’s report into grooming gangs?
Below I explore how this historic scandal and calls for a national inquiry became such a difficult issue for the government. But we’ll be bringing you the latest on everything else going on this week too...
It’s a political maxim that if you’re going to be forced into a particular decision anyway, you may as well decide to do it yourself first. It’s a lesson Keir Starmer could do with learning.
We got confirmation from the Home Secretary on Monday afternoon of news briefed over the weekend: the government is launching a public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, on the recommendation of Dame Louise Casey and her “rapid audit”. I covered the statement yesterday, while Megan Kenyon has an excellent analysis of what the report found.
Addressing the Commons, Yvette Cooper told MPs Casey’s report revealed “a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children”, condemning the “collective failure” to address questions about ethnicity and announcing a number of government measures, including new laws, new mandatory reporting rules, new support for victims and new data collection. Her reference to “cultural and social drivers for this sort of offending” is striking, given the past reluctance from both main parties to address the issue of ethnicity in this area, as was her announcement that people convicted of grooming or sexually abusing children will be denied the right to claim asylum.
But for all that, it is the national public inquiry that is the focus.
The U-turn means the government is now in the position it seemed to want to avoid in January, when the issue of a scandal that took place over a decade ago shot back to the top of the political agenda, in no small part thanks to the attention of Elon Musk. Back then, Starmer claimed those calling for a national inquiry on the subject were “jumping on a bandwagon” and “amplifying what the far right is saying”.
This reference was intended to address the conspiracy theories zooming around in the darker corners of the internet that Labour figures like Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had deliberately covered up abuse scandals for personal gain. But taken out of context, it seemed to imply the Prime Minister thought anyone outraged or concerned about this historic episode of unfathomable state failure had ulterior motives.
The government have had valid reasons to resist calls for a national inquiry. Alexis Jay, who compiled a 467-page report into child sexual abuse published in 2022, opposed one, on the grounds that it would delay the implementation of the recommendations she had already made. So did other experts, including, initially, Casey herself. It is understood that it was in part her conversations with victims that changed her mind, who have for years continued to be failed by the authorities – although it should be noted that there are thousands of victims, and they do not all speak with one voice.
There were reasons, too, for pointing out that some of those calling the loudest for a national inquiry – such as Kemi Badenoch and her shadow home secretary, Chris Philp – hadn’t seemed to care about the issue until Musk highlighted it. Badenoch, who was physically shaking with righteous indignation when she responded to Cooper in the Chamber on Monday, had not met or made plans to meet any of the victims when she made her demand for an inquiry in January, nor showed much interest in the topic when she was women’s and equalities minister. Philp – as Jess Phillips pointed out in an explosive Commons performance in April – had not held a single meeting on the subject in his two years a minister for crime, policing and fire.
But the rush to shut down dissenters made the government seem like it was out of touch with the horror the public was feeling – albeit for a scandal that had not come as news to many in parliament, most notably the Prime Minister.
“We are fooling ourselves if we think this child abuse scandal is all about individual failings and that the dispatch of key individuals is a sufficient response. The patterns of sexual abuse and exploitation described in the report are not new… Nor are the inadequate responses.”
These were Starmer’s words, in response not to Casey’s report this week but to Jay’s in August 2014 into the Rotherham gangs. When he wrote them, he had just spent five years as director of public prosecutions, focusing (among other things) on changing the culture at the Crown Prosecution Service so more rape gang cases could come to court. The 2014 Starmer wasn’t even an MP yet, and his writing is that of a lawyer, not a politician. But it is evident in his condemnation of how victims were ignored and calls for a mandatory reporting scheme for child sexual violence that he both understood the scale of the scandal and was outraged about it.
Perhaps this explains the more recent reluctance on the Prime Minister’s part to reopen a subject that had hardly been swept under the rug, at the urging of people who (he might justifiably argue) simply hadn’t been paying attention. But politics doesn’t respond to such detached logic. Given the strength of feeling as gruesome details that were in the public domain but not common knowledge became front-page news once more, a national inquiry was virtually inevitable. A Prime Minister in touch with public anger should have realised that.
Starmer should have realised, too, that hesitating would fuel the very worst conspiracies that he and his team have something to cover up and that a prolonged delay and sharp U-turn would cause extra damage. (After last summer’s Southport riots, he might have wanted to consider too that it would be better to announce an inquiry in January, when the sun sets at 4pm, than during the long, hot evenings of June.) The delay has damaged the government’s credibility on an issue Starmer and others in his team actually have a very strong record tackling. Almost a year into the job, it’s a political lesson the Prime Minister ought to have learned.
Rachel’s picks
Freddie Hayward has a dispatch from Maga-land, where conflict in the Middle East is threatening Trump’s agenda.
When you’re done reading Megan Kenyon’s piece on the Casey report, she’s got another great explainer on why abortion is returning to Parliament today.
David Gauke, who usually has a word or two of comfort for Rachel Reeves, thinks her fiscal headache is getting worse.
Will Dunn has some good news (maybe?) on the possible end of water privatisation.
We can pretend that ticket price caps will solve the problems people face. Or we can build on a secure, regulated resale ecosystem. Restricting ticket resale empowers fraudsters, argues Nicola Harding, CEO of We Fight Fraud.
Mailshot
Reuters: Israeli tank kills 51 people awaiting aid in Gaza, ministry says
Standard: Kim Woodburn dies at 83
Constance Kampfner: How the grooming gangs scandal unfolded
Suzy Hansen: Crimes of the century
Adam Serwer: The tyrant test
S. C. Cornell: Geniuses behaving badly
And with that…
Have a good day, George will be with you tomorrow. My thanks to Sydney Diack and George Monaghan.
An historical analysis of the proxy racism inherent to 'Grooming Gangs', FYI:
1) "Muslim grooming gangs" was a racist slur invented by the EDL back in the early 2000s. Like the garbage allegations made against Jews in the last century, Muslims were 'coming to the UK and despoiling our women/boys'.
2) As distrust of the political system grew, the UK's politico-media system began to implement this anti-Muslim weapon to try and gain support, from islamophobes Sarah Champion and Jack Straw in Labour to Trevor Kavanagh's 'the Muslim problem'.
3)The UK media has swerved massively to the Hard Right, Islamophobia became a selling point - as the Muslim Council pointed out in an analysis of 10,000 media articles on Muslims, "59% of all articles associated Muslims with negative behaviour."
3) The Overton Window in the UK has now become so right-wing it wears swastika underpants and goes to torchlit rallies. Hard-right newspapers (anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail, the Express, etc.) have reverted to the antisemitic commentary of the 1920s-30s, swapping the word 'Jew' for 'Muslim'; they are emulated by 'Red Wall' Labour MPs who fear losing their seats, encouraged by Glasman's Blueshirts.
4) If Labour gave a f*** about sexual abuse of children, it would start with the worst offenders, the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and UK social services. But those are overwhelmingly white (and in the case of the churches, powerful and wealthy) organizations, which presents a problem for proxy racism. So Muslims get it in the neck.
5) Even black/Asian politicians like Konvenience-birth Kemi and Brownshirt Braverman can't conceal the obvious, glaring racism of this proxy abuse. Bent Bobby Jenrick can wear all the islamophobic t-shirts he wants, but we've been through this before in the 1930s. Swapping antisemitism for islamophobia makes no difference.
6) A depression in the UK, continuing loathing of the UK political system and UK media, utter hatred of Apartheid Labour and the sense of being ignored will likely drive the UK electorate to desperate measures. Even if Nazi Nigel isn't the Fuhrer Oswald Mosley was, who knows what will happen in the light of the absolute immorality and spinelessness of Keir?
7) One Keir began the Labour party, another Keir will end it - at least that's symmetrical....
An historical analysis of the proxy racism inherent to 'Grooming Gangs', FYI:
1) "Muslim grooming gangs" was a racist slur invented by the EDL back in the early 2000s. Like the garbage allegations made against Jews in the last century, Muslims were 'coming to the UK and despoiling our women/boys'.
2) As distrust of the political system grew, the UK's politico-media system began to implement this anti-Muslim weapon to try and gain support, from islamophobes Sarah Champion and Jack Straw in Labour to Trevor Kavanagh's 'the Muslim problem'.
3)The UK media has swerved massively to the Hard Right, Islamophobia became a selling point - as the Muslim Council pointed out in an analysis of 10,000 media articles on Muslims, "59% of all articles associated Muslims with negative behaviour."
3) The Overton Window in the UK has now become so right-wing it wears swastika underpants and goes to torchlit rallies. Hard-right newspapers (anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail, the Express, etc.) have reverted to the antisemitic commentary of the 1920s-30s, swapping the word 'Jew' for 'Muslim'; they are emulated by 'Red Wall' Labour MPs who fear losing their seats, encouraged by Glasman's Blueshirts.
4) If Labour gave a f*** about sexual abuse of children, it would start with the worst offenders, the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and UK social services. But those are overwhelmingly white (and in the case of the churches, powerful and wealthy) organizations, which presents a problem for proxy racism. So Muslims get it in the neck.
5) Even black/Asian politicians like Konvenience-birth Kemi and Brownshirt Braverman can't conceal the obvious, glaring racism of this proxy abuse. Bent Bobby Jenrick can wear all the islamophobic t-shirts he wants, but we've been through this before in the 1930s. Swapping antisemitism for islamophobia makes no difference.
6) A depression in the UK, continuing loathing of the UK political system and UK media, utter hatred of Apartheid Labour and the sense of being ignored will likely drive the UK electorate to desperate measures. Even if Nazi Nigel isn't the Fuhrer Oswald Mosley was, who knows what will happen in the light of the absolute immorality and spinelessness of Keir?
7) One Keir began the Labour party, another Keir will end it - at least that's symmetrical....