Hop on to the rolling "extremist momentum," everyone!
In the UK, the grooming gangs saga has made a shocking return to the limelight, with Keir Starmer mercifully jumping on the righteous wagon. Once dismissing those seeking a national inquiry as a far-right mob, Starmer has now made a glaring U-turn – quite the norm for him, if we're being honest.
With the stain of thousands of girls being raped, abused, and sometimes even brutally killed on their conscience, Labour has finally consented to a national inquiry. The recommendation from Baroness Casey, appointed by Starmer in January, is the catalyst for this much-needed inquiry. Empowered with statutory powers, it will force witnesses to testify and push local authorities to hold themselves accountable for past neglect. This move firmly closes a gaping loophole in Labour's weak earlier promises, confining victims to watered-down local inquiries, only upon request.
The ball hasn't been dropped by Labour alone. Labour-run municipalities have seen their share of the bloody legacy of these vile, deadly crimes, from Rotherham to Rochdale, Telford, Oldham, Huddersfield, and Newcastle. They allowed the most disadvantaged members of our society – young girls, many of them wards of the state – to be repeatedly raped, recruited into drug addiction, and objects of unspeakable barbarism on a staggering scale. When the girls reported their tormentors to the police, they were often dismissed as wayward substance abusers or treated as a uniform risk, primarily because of their race. Politically correct silence was preferred over curbing the child rapists for the sake of an untarnished multicultural image.
This reprehensible reality was made crystal clear by report after heart-wrenching report, thanks to the brave investigative journalism of Andrew Norfolk, Julie Bindel, Charlie Peters, and others unafraid to confront the truth. Time and again, the authorities refused to acknowledge the issue or misconstrued it as a racist conspiracy theory or overblown accusation, even treating the revelations as a weaponized political stunt.
Labour has been at the forefront of deflecting blame for more than two decades now. When Ann Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley, first attempted to sound the alarm in the early 2000s, she was dismissed as dangerous and irresponsible by Shahid Malik, a high-ranking Labour official and seasoned Commission for Racial Equality veteran. When Rotherham MP Sarah Champion spoke out in 2017 – long after the horrors in her constituency were exposed by Norfolk – she was summarily expelled from Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. Recently, Labour frontbencher Lucy Powell declared the rape gangs as a 'dog whistle' on BBC Radio 4. This is who Labour has become: a calculating, callous political entity that cares little for working-class communities, pandering to the fear of being labeled racist and resisting the need to challenge their ideological preconceptions.
None of the political parties escape without tarnish in this sordid affair. The Conservatives, in power for 14 years, had ample time to instigate the national inquiry they now tout. But let's hope that this long-overdue inquiry doesn't prove to be the sham many have become. Victims, their families, and the nation await the truth – the depth of cowardice, cover-ups, and indifference they deserve to know. After decades of denial and negligence, it's high time we face these ugly truths head-on.
Culture and politics have intertwined in the UK's handling of the grooming gangs saga, with the impact of cancel culture potentially exacerbating the issue. In certain instances, those who spoke out about the systemic neglect were dismissed or discredited, silenced by politically correct norms. This was said to have contributed to a delayed national inquiry, with the accused being treated as victims of a 'cancel culture' instead of victims deserving justice and accountability.
