Eleanor Mills on Rory Stewart:
His remarks on a Spectator podcast about Britain’s grooming gangs (a polite euphemism for the mostly Pakistani-origin men who preyed on and gang-raped vulnerable, predominantly white girls in care, in the most horrendous, nightmare-inducing ways) now place him, for me, beyond the pale.
“Do I think that [the grooming gangs scandal] is a big problem for Britain? No,” he told host Michael Gove. “What are the real problems facing Britain? Not this.” He then went on to name the economy and a lack of innovation in public services as far more pressing.
Well grooming gangs are not a problem for him, so…
Anyone who has watched the BBC drama Three Girls, based on the true stories of victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale, or read any of the official reports into what happened to children in Rotherham, Telford, Oxford or any of the other cities where these depraved men operated, wouldn’t be human if they didn’t feel angry and “bang on” about it. It is a massive stain on our society that so many young girls were abused for so long and the authorities did nothing about it.
They didn’t want to be accused of Islamophobia, you see.
What makes Stewart’s dismissive remarks, made in the context of defending the Muslim community, even worse is that they are an exact echo of the attitudes that allowed this abuse to continue for so many years. Local authorities didn’t take action for fear of being thought “racist”, even though many of the abused girls were in their so-called “care”.
Is Stewart aware that even “the Muslim community” consists of female people as well as male people? Does he think he’s showing solidarity with that “community” by being conspicuously indifferent to women and girls?