In a major reversal, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced on Saturday that the government will launch a national inquiry with full statutory authority to investigate the child rape grooming gang scandal and cover-up in the United Kingdom.
After months of refusing and even deriding calls for a national inquiry, Prime Minister Starmer said per The Times that he has been convinced it was “the right thing to do” after an upcoming review from Baroness Louise Casey, set to be published this week, was set to make a recommendation for a national inquiry with a specific focus on the ethnicities of the rapists and the politically correct failures and cover-ups conducted by local officials.
The decision by Starmer to back a full inquiry, which will have the authority to compel witness testimony, may imperil members of his own left-wing Labour Party, given that many of the identified hotspots of grooming gang activity were in Labour-controlled areas of the country. The inquiry may even drag the prime minister’s role into the scandal, as he served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) when the scandal first broke in 2011.
Responding to the reversal from Starmer, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who has been one of the leading voices demanding a full inquiry, wrote on X: “The government’s decision to launch a national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal is a welcome u-turn.
“A full statutory enquiry, done correctly, will expose the multiple failings of the British establishment. I repeat the words ‘done correctly’ — this cannot be a whitewash. It’s time for victims to receive the justice they deserve and for perpetrators to face the full force of the law.”
Farage’s deputy, MP Richard Tice, remarked that it represented “another massive Starmer u-turn due to fear of Reform UK. Once again Labour copying Reform policy.”
While previous localised reports have spoken of thousands of mostly white young girl victims, the true scale of the issue has never been reckoned with fully. There has also been a complete lack of accountability, with no local officials or police facing any consequences for their failures to safeguard young girls.
The perpetrators, mainly of Pakistani heritage, often worked as taxi drivers or delivery drivers and would prey upon young disadvantaged girls from troubled backgrounds. The men would typically pretend to court the young girls before hooking them on drugs and alcohol, whereupon they would pass the young girls around as effective sex slaves between their friends and families.
A 2017 report from the counter-extremism think tank Quilliam claimed that the predominantly Muslim grooming gang members specifically preyed upon young white girls, whom they saw as “easy targets” and “open to sex”.
Conversely, the report found that “girls from the Asian community are seen as commodities to be ‘protected’, whereas girls from outside of the community are seen as fair game.”
The reversal from Starmer to conduct a full national inquiry comes in direct contrast to his statements earlier this year, when he claimed that those who backed the call were jumping on the “bandwagon of the far-right“.
Labour MP Jess Phillips, who serves as Starmer’s Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, had also shot down efforts to launch a full national inquiry, despite having admitted that “there were cover-ups”.
Multiple local reports have found that the issue of young girls being groomed and raped were overlooked for fear among local officials and police of appearing racist, given that the victims were primarily white and the offenders mostly Pakistanis.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
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