There will be a national enquiry into the grooming gangs

[inkognitha]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/14/keir-starmer-national-inquiry-grooming-gangs

Posting here for traffic

YABU: this was unnecessary
YANBU: this was the right thing to do

I agree. If there is a pattern it shouldn’t be ignored. The communities the perpetrators come from need to address it from within.

We all know how we got here and the long, hard path. It’s not difficult:

Nervousness about social unrest from official confirmation of facts of abuse: Tories and Labour

Terror at confirmation of cover up and protection of party interests: Labour

Or as the former labour MP of Rochdale, Simon Dancuk put it...

"It was a harrowing experience that revealed to me the strength of the Labour Party's willingness to cover up the scandal in order to protect its support among local ethnic minorities.

"In effect, innocent young girls were sacrificed on the altar of political expediency"

This is pretty damning

Absolutely horrifying.
Thank God for Maggie Oliver and those who supported her campaign for justice.

Dominic Cummings has talked about how this cover up will be shown to go all the way to Whitehall.

At the Dominic Cummings’s Pharos Lecture in Oxford: He talked about the scale of arse covering.

“In January, No. 10 Downing Street claimed that Elon Musk was spreading conspiracy theories about national cover‑ups. This is wrong. I witnessed the attempts at these cover‑ups myself when I was in working in Whitehall – including the deliberate attempt by government departments to use courts to block reporting of the entire story"

If this is true ( and I don’t trust Cummings) then not only should heads roll but there should be criminal proceedings if there were attempts to block justice.

I can’t believe the narrative that closed it all
down. There should be resignations over this.

Starmer can't even bring himself to apologise for framing those who have concerns about this issue as far right adjacent.

Thank God for Maggie Oliver and those who supported her campaign for justice

Indeed, @EasternStandard, but as another read of her evidence showed, what happened before in terms of shutting down avenues of enquiry can hap-pen again and almost certainly will

Whatever it takes ... "losing" records, blaming a lack of action on "lack of resouces", discrediting key witnesses, replacing inconvenient personnel and all the rest ... I fully expect that it'll happen again for the simple reason that our authorities don't want to address the more difficult issues

And unfortunately there's no process or law which can overcome the mindsets of those charged with enacting them

Yeah, I can understand your mistrust. I don't like the guy, I don't think many do but I think if he is right and this did happen, he might be one of a few people with enough of an axe to grind to spill the beans on the whole shit show.

Agree with this. Cummings has also made these claims to Sky, who say the the dept of education and Rotherham council have not responded to a request for comment. He said Rotherham council wanted Michael Gove to appear in court to help with the cover up. Thankfully, he refused. Cummings worked in Whitehall before he started working for Johnson. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

Yep, this will be replicated in many areas. As I've posted on MN before, Labour led Oldham council is the same. Labour lost overall control last year, and only then was there a vote for a full national inquiry. One of the MPs for Oldham didn't mention this when she spoke in the HoC today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr46yxnw1d1o

Dominic Cummings has talked about how this cover up will be shown to go all the way to Whitehall

Though I regret the source I'd be more surprised if it didn't go all the way to Whitehall, hence why the arse-covering will be moving into top gear even as we type, including - but not limited to - making sure that only "sound" personnel are tasked to deal with this

Doubtless "lessons will be learned" will make an appearance all too soon, but I do hope nobody assumes this means what it appears to say?

You know, I'm going to hope that this inquiry will do better than the others, so I'm just going to go with that until there's evidence to the contrary. I'm not sure what satisfaction that you're getting out of saying there's no point. Perhaps with the degree of public demand for this (76% wanted an inquiry - YouGov) and renewed discourse that will follow there will be more appetite in the media to hold the authorities to account. We'll have to see but I won't be demoralised yet.

I'm going to hope that this inquiry will do better than the others, so I'm just going to go with that until there's evidence to the contrary

FWIW I genuinely admire your commitment to hope, @ThePhantomoftheEcobubbleOpera - it's just a shame that the evidence for what happens in such cases is plentifully laid out in Maggie Oliver's excoriating evidence among others

I suppose the best hope is that it might be different this time, but long experience teaches this is a hope unlikely to be realised
As said we can change laws, guidelines, targets and all the rest, but changing the mindsets of those who'd prefer not to know is rather harder

Not a fan of Cummings but hope he spills the beans …this has been covered up at the highest levels …I was sick when I read some of the transcripts of what happened to those girls!

This cannot be allowed to lie…

Labour avoided it as votes were more important than children’s lives…the perps are still walking about in their towns !

Labour didn’t need Louise Casey to do a review it was clear as day what had been done and by precisely who…people should be shouting it from the roof tops why this was covered up…Starmer and Jess Philips should go as a minimum and now …

Maggie Oliver what a woman …why isn’t she on the honours lists…

This 100% 👍

Should the gross generalisation “Asian” be retired?

Another thing here that annoys me is the frequent reference to Asian men. It isn’t Japanese, Nepalese, Vietnamese or Sri Lankan men, is it?! Let’s be clear, it’s Pakistani men.

It is, but it's true! Not often I find myself silently cheering a Labour MP!

Labour richly deserve to take a kicking for this. They will bend over backwards to court the "Asian Vote" for whatever reason and that is one of the reasons for Reform's rise in popularity in the "Red Wall" areas.

Yes, and it's this phrasing that has diluted and obscured the scale of this crime in the Male British Pakistani community.

A pp on this thread used the term brown men to further distract this issue. As if the colour of the perpetrators was the driving commonality. And also as a tactic to slur those who were in favour of an inquiry on the thread as racist.

Ex Labour going by that post. Probably why they’ve spoken up.

I think Labour have covered this up by using ‘far right’ etc and it’ll come back to bite.