Nobody has joined the dots
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.
It comes after Home Office minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation – saying the council should lead it instead.
Why? I’m guessing the government has more resources than a local council, so why shouldn’t the government investigate? Is it too…trivial?
Posting on X, Badenoch said: “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol.
The sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs has fuelled a number of far-right campaigns which have focused on cases of large-scale abuse carried out mainly by men of Pakistani descent.
And why might that be? Is it at all possible that it’s because Islam hates women?
Not wanting to incite racist hatreds is certainly basic decency, but if the result is ignoring large-scale abuse of very young girls, maybe there’s a problem?
To state the obvious, it’s because the Labour government cannot afford to offend Muslims.
There are now about 50 Parliamentary constituencies where Muslims are above 30% of the electorate (with by far the biggest part of that being the Pakistani-origin communities that gave rise to the rape gangs, where, of course, the number in those communities who knew what was going on was far larger than just the perpetrators, who are also far more numerous than just those who have been prosecuted).
Traditionally Muslims in Britain have voted en masse for Labour (in the same way that American blacks have tended to vote en masse for the Democrats). but most of them identify more with being Muslim than they do with being Labour supporters.
In this year’s election, in four such constituencies the incumbent moderate Muslims that Labour ran as their candidates lost to hardline Islamists running as independents. This was because of Israel/Gaza, owing to which they perceived that Labour did not hate Jews sufficiently for their liking. (In UK politics major parties losing to independents is rare; for Labour to lose seats like this in the middle of winning an election is unprecedented.)
Labour is running scared that this might be the beginning of a “Muslim Party” in UK politics. That could lose them dozens of seats (since, even where a Muslim Party could not win, splitting the traditional Labour vote in a first-past-the-post system could still lose Labour the seat).
So Labour will not upset Muslims. When, recently, Labour MP Tahir Ali asked in Parliament for a law prohibiting “desecration of religious texts and the prophets”, Keir Starmer did not outright reject this request for blasphemy laws but replied only with a feeble “Desecration is awful, and I think it should be condemned across the House”.
Stand by for serious legal prohibitions on criticising Islam before long …
As always, as throughout history, girls and women are expected to pay the price so that a society can keep the peace between men. Women won’t form mobs, invade Pakistani communities, and beat up the inhabitants – even if we are the ones being targeted. Men, on the other hand, form gangs on the flimsiest excuse; and there are, sadly, plenty of men who hate those who are different, and will be eager to cause mayhem without caring in the least about the original victims.
And Jess Phillips only just won her seat in the UK’s 2024 general election, holding on despite the largest drop in vote share in her constituency. The Worker’s Party of Britain, with strong Muslim support due to the party’s support for Palestine against Israel, came out of nowhere to second place only 693 votes behind.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001100
I’m guessing Phillips thinks she has to be careful not to offend Muslims if she wants to keep her seat at the next election.
She also commented that the 2024 election was the worst she’s experienced for intimidation whilst canvassing:
“Baroness Shaista Gohir, who leads the national charity Muslim Women’s Network UK, told BBC Radio WM: “I’ve been really concerned observing what has been happening to the female candidates in areas where you have a significant Muslim electorate.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ng3j1pnpqo
The ex-chief prosecuter who did not allow Rochdale to be swept under the rug (himself a muslim) recommends local inquiries because they have more useful local impacts. To be clear, the previous conservative government also rejected calls from Oldham councilors for a national inquiry into the Oldham cases, and there was a national inquiry on CSE in the UK released in 2022 which was horrendous to read. A few years ago the home office in the UK also released a report (2020 or 2021) that suggested the majority of grooming gangs were white, and that they could not draw conclusions on whether south-asian heritage men were disproportionately involved. https://tinyurl.com/3wbpru64
While Labour may or may or may not be wary about losing the Muslim vote, this is an issue generally ignored by both parties. It’s pretty rich to pin this on a 6 month old labour government when the coalition and Tory governments more or less ignored this for a decade ( the tories had two years to act on the recommendations and did very little beside making pledges).
This is Musk being his usual loud dumbass self showing lack of any basic knowledge or understanding and Badenoch being a hypocritical opportunist, shifting attention to themselves and away from the actual issues. If anyone believes Elon or Tommy Robinson actually prioritizes justice for victims or preventing this happening I have a Tesla roadster to sell you.
Oh I didn’t realize this started with Musk. Sigh.
Nazir Afzal is the ex-chief prosecutor you have in mind, yes?
Careful, now, OB. Careful.! Some would say that you are bordering on Islamophobia there. (Islamophobia is the irrational fear of, hostility towards, or hatred against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, according to good old Wikipedia.) So criticism of Islam amounts to an attack on those born and raised in it.
Some indignant Imam down at your nearest mosque could reward you with a fatwah, or maybe even a jihad.!!! Trump himself might have to come to your rescue.!!!
It does not bear thinking about.
Oh, poppet, you think I don’t know that? After Does God Hate Women? Of course that was the first thing out of some people’s mouths. See also the gang at Freethought Blogs, who Went There when I refused to agree that men can be women. “Oh yers and I always thought she was a bit of an Islamophobe too blah blah blah.”
Ah yes, Free-from-thought blogs… it’s fine if Islam hates women, that’s normal, doncha know.
FraserJH#4. Thank you very much for some sense & truth.
My view is that they absolutely should do the inquiry, unless they want a repeat of the xenophobic violence that hit the UK last year.
If the public believes that the government is too afraid of offending the Muslim community to do something about these rape gangs, it is only a matter of time before the public goes the extra-legal route.
And lets be honest here, Gaza cost Labour the Muslim vote, and Labour won the election. This left-wing idea of having to be allied with everyone the right doesn’t like, doesn’t appear to hold true.
Finally, look, if the government was looking the other way over gangs from my community committing rape because they were afraid of upsetting me, I’d be rather upset at the government thinking I was pro rape. Why is there this assumption that rape gangs are somehow something the Muslim community in Britain would want to stand behind?
@Bruce #10:
The relevant Pakistani-origin communities are hugely tribal. For part of the reason for that, see here.
Part of the background to all this is worth recounting, including the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white youths. The police made a perfunctory enquiry but didn’t prosecute anyone. After campaining by Stephen’s parents, an enquiry said that the police would have been far more energetic if it had been a white boy who had been murdered, and on the basis of that proclaimed that the entire police force were “institutionally racist”.
While there was some merit in this, the broad-brush and all-encompassing nature of the proclamation was probably not helpful. Anyhow, the police received such a drubbing from the press and politicians over this that, when evidence of the Pakistani rape gangs began to emerge, the police attitude was “there’s just no way we’re going there”. Ditto social services and local councillors. They knew that anyone who said anything would be instantly labelled “racist” and an enabler of the “far right”.
Some (mostly women) decided to brave these charges and speak up. Huge credit goes to the Labour MP Ann Cryer, who was one of the first. The Guardian (much later) reported: “Cryer said she had “constant” meetings with West Yorkshire police and social services, only to be told there was no point trying to mount prosecutions. She claimed: “They found constant excuses not to do anything”.”
She went to elders at the mosque with a list of 35 names and addresses of the alleged perpetrators. “But the upshot was that the elders allegedly said, ‘Go back to Ann Cryer and tell her it’s nothing to do with us.’ ”
And yes, one can indeed also accuse the Tories of not saying anything either (since, of course, it would be way easier to label them as “racists” and enablers of the “far right”), though since most of these high-immigrant areas vote Labour, most of the local politicians on the ground were Labour.
Coel: Re inbreeding
I recall reading an article about cousin marriage (sorry, I don’t remember where) in which it was stated that the Romans strongly discouraged cousin marriage so loyalties would be more to Rome than to the extended family. This was continued by the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in most European countries being strongly outbred. This had some exceptions in royal families, who wanted to keep land within the family and had the money/power to by exemptions from the rules from the Catholic Church.
Jim Baerg, I think the exemption was broader than that. Charles Darwin married his first cousin. He wasn’t royal, but he was part of the upper class.
Not exactly upper, but the intellectual upper middle class. The upper is the nobility and descendants of the nobility. The uppers of course looked down on the middle class, regardless of how clever and accomplished they may have been.
Sorry, didn’t mean to do a drive by Ophelia. Yes, Nazir Afzal is the ex-prosecuter.
Well there are no minimum stay requirements!