Fiona Goddard, a victim of the grooming gang, has resigned from enquiry panel

Yeah it’s basically laziness on their part. I got accused of not liking Khan because he’s a muslim. Really annoying as an ethnic minority myself, I can dislike someone for being a twat.

Completely agree with you, to me he’s basically the same as any male Labour politician. I saw a picture of him once with his family, his daughters were wearing short skirts, no islamist would be letting that slide. It’s bollocks really.

There was already that with IICSA

Not all survivors were grooming gang survivors, some were victims/survivors of other CSE apparently there at Jess’s request, and were asking for the inquiry to be widened. If that is true then it isn’t surprising they don’t want her to resign.

”“When asked directly in the feedback session, Jess was clear that the focus would be on grooming gangs, however survivors in the group explained that they would be excluded for not fitting the generalised stereotype of what that is and should focus on CSE [child sexual exploitation].”

Hmmm…

Apparently some survivors do want her and won’t stay otherwise, and some don’t. It’s all very confusing 🤷

I think it really isn't worthwhile speculating about all of this at this stage.

We are allowing news reporting to slant what we "know" and then use it to quite honestly just makes points that aren't based on any real info.

It has now become clear that other survivors are NOT wanting Jess Phillips to resign, and say if she is sacked they will withdraw from the process. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/23/five-grooming-gang-survivors-tell-pm-they-will-stay-on-panel-only-if-jess-phillips-remains-in-post

I suspect that for the survivors this is all a nightmare. The whole setting up stage seems to have taken far longer than it should, but also amongst the whole group of survivors there are different opinions as to what the inquire should cover, and what they each want as individuals.

And they may also as individuals misunderstood what they are being offered.

Just because when people write official statements or intentions the whole language is quite obscure, so each of us can take away from it what we want to hear.

Then when it is started to be implemented we start to think, that's not what I understood.

I have no idea how this can be sorted out.

Its really sad.

This BBC report refers to the charity who are meant to insure that the inquiry is set up in a way that is best for survivors. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c201x4d7z5no

Hence voting against the inquiry and then trying to change its scope.

I meant to say Jess WAS a Project Manager (not she wasn’t one). She had a paid job like we all do. She probably applied for dozens of jobs like we all do and just happened to get the job. People act like she’s this martyr over it.

FTAOD Jess Phillips is a neighbouring MP and does her best to serve her constituents from all the real people I have met.

Yeah and?! It was paid job. She wasn’t a Project Manager! People act like she was this virtuous volunteer. When I was 18 I used to be an annoying clipboard person for a Dementia charity. It was a paid job. I don’t 10 years later act like I’m this saint for it. That would be ridiculous.

Yeah, that comes from a lot of online right types who also think Sadiq Khan is an Islamist when he's basically a woke troll.

Sadiq of course is of Muhajir origin, and I bet he has some spicy opinions about Mirpuris.

Connor Tomlinson does this a lot with minority politicians. He also hallucinated that Shabana Mahmood is some kind of far leftist, when anyone in Labour will tell you she makes David Blunkett look like a hippie.

I think it’s probably become apparent that certain areas are basically going to be very difficult for established parties to contest and will probably end up with politicians who prioritise the specific interests of muslim constituencies.

In news not being discussed here, the demise of the two party system and electoral reform is the subject biggest all party parliamentary working group (except Reform who aren't into it) which is looking to make changes.

PR would stave off a lot of these more concentrated minorities. If you are will to pay the price of more democratic representation (which is most certainly not on Reforms agenda).

Yeah they won’t like her, she’s a woman, she’s pro LGBTQ+, she’s married to a white bloke. She’s basically just extremely “woke”. She’s not some sort of islamist as people on twitter have been suggesting, she’s a true child of the worst aspects of British student politics.

I think it’s probably become apparent that certain areas are basically going to be very difficult for established parties to contest and will probably end up with politicians who prioritise the specific interests of muslim constituencies. Given this, everyone can probably stop worrying about offending anyone because you aren’t going to win that seat anyway.

Which is the reason I think the Tories are now really becoming more critical of political islam, burkas etc etc. Labour I think needs to understand that they will probably lose these seats at the next election anyway so they may as well just do the right thing.

I raised muslim vote last year on here, they wanted to remove the laws against religious coercion and I got accused of fear mongering. Well Muslim vote are one of the organisations that back various sitting MP’s who are clearly mainly interested in sectarian issues.

So postal voting needs to be limited to those actually out of the country (i.e. they have gone through a port and not returned by the cut-off date for postal votes) and those who are severely disabled. At the moment, postal voting is a huge vehicle for fraud and Labour know this. The Tories tried to cover it up by introducing ID at the polling station (a minute amount of fraud) rather than tackle the minorities who use postal votes to get in their preferred candidate and also disenfranchising many minority group women and vulnerable people.

It's normally a given that abusers tend to target ppl in their own ethnicity (seems reasonable assumption BC that's who any person would have most day to day contact).

So the disparity in victim and offender origin is really marked. Were they also grooming girls from the black community? The riots in Lozells in 2005 centred around an allegation of rape by a black teenager against a Pakistani shop owner.

Also, you would expect the majority of offenders to be white British since the majority of the population meets that criteria on ethnicity. What is more to the point is what the per centage of non-white (but not necessarily non-British) offenders is compared to their representation in the UK. And if ethnicity is not always noted, then why?

Sultana might take some votes from a more moderate Labour candidate though.

I've put it on the Corbyn/Sultana thread, but the lead story in this week's Spectator is relevant

The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance | The Spectator

I suspect that Muslim Vote, who are the organisation that really matters, will find some Ayoub Khan type bloke who will be preferable to Sultana in their eyes, and Your Party will not be very relevant.

What a farce. They are STILL trying to cover it all up😡
Collapsed into chaos before its even started

@SionnachRuadh interesting, but if there’s a dedicated Gaza/Muslim-issue candidate then the votes will be directed to them, no matter how superior a candidate - or indeed Muslim - Shabana Mahmoud might be.

Zarah Sultana is also planning to chicken run from Coventry, where she's never been popular, to Birmingham Ladywood to stand against Shabana Mahmood, who's also of Mirpuri origin. That will be fascinating if it happens.

Shabana is a quite devout Muslim, deeply rooted in her local community, and one of the very few Labour MPs who openly describes herself as socially conservative, and while she was run close last year, her challenger was a hardcore Muslim sectarian charging her essentially with not being Muslim enough. If her challenger is a young woman who's nominally Muslim but in fact atheist, who embraces rainbow alphabet politics and who's married to a white bloke... I think Shabana will be much less worried.

Their lines on the inquiry will be interesting. Mahmood has, I think, taken the view that this is a terrible disgrace for the community and it needs to be sorted out, and on a more political level, you don't fight Tommy Robinson by proving him right. Sultana (who's very chummy with the SWP these days) is more likely to say the inquiry is a far right dogwhistle.

Postal votes have become a real problem. Is this being addressed at all?

Labour will be losing many towns and cities. There’s no point in their trying to court Muslim voters if they now have their own candidates.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a move for “city states” before too long with own rules on various matters.

We need to do away with postal votes. Too open to corruption.

As noted on the Corbzy Sultana Your Party thread, Zarah Sultana is from the Mirpuri community who almost certainly would have faced community opposition in her support for non socially conservative causes like LGBTQ stuff, so it would be really good to hear from her, and YP the plans that this party have to stop sexual exploitation of working class women, what with their supposed existence is to achieve working class liberation from the hated capitalist class exploiting them

Although they'll no doubt tie themselves in knots deliberating over whether Pakistani origin cab drivers and drug dealers also count as oppressed if not more so, and go all #NotAll like that link from Corbyn in 2017 up thread

Thinking about the Southall black sisters debacle, what has happened esp since 9/11 is a complete differentiation of the actual migrant origin communities that old school left wingers (overwhelmingly white, middle class, likely to be involved in public sector esp social workers) still can't quite compute. Vis this Telegraph article from a Sikh writer

https://archive.ph/1yKhA