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

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https://x.com/fionagoddarduk/status/1980169972413607999?s=46&t=ALGAiHxwK3XXeRoDQylnWA

Sounds like the enquiry is going well 🙄

Political parties are always terrible on scandals they might be implicated in, even historic ones.

Look at the Lib Dems. I don't think they've got anyone still alive and active who was involved in the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, but through keeping silent about it for decades while Thorpe became a forgotten figure, they've managed to avoid owning up to the fact that every senior figure in the Liberal Party knew about Norman Scott, and almost all of them were involved in one of the many schemes to shut him up.

Cyril Smith was worse, and lots of his enablers are still around, but they got the ancient David Steel to be the sin-eater for the party, and go off disgraced into retirement, while nobody else had to take any responsibility.

This is far bigger and far worse. It might be the worst scandal for any British party in history. And Labour have every incentive for wanting the inquiry to fail, because dozens of Labour MPs in the North and Midlands depend on votes from a Mirpuri community who will shift in an instant to Corbyn or Galloway or some other vehicle if elders tell them the community is being victimised.

If we take recent polling seriously, Labour are at risk of being wiped out in Birmingham, with mostly Muslim areas voting for Corbynite candidates and all the other areas going to Reform. I assume Jess Phillips can read an opinion poll.

But the more Labour go into coverup mode, the worse it gets for them. I think Shabana Mahmood understands this. I don't think Jess does.

And Labour have every incentive for wanting the inquiry to fail, because dozens of Labour MPs in the North and Midlands depend on votes from a Mirpuri community who will shift in an instant to Corbyn or Galloway or some other vehicle if elders tell them the community is being victimised.

They will lose to Muslim independents (who will then form an Islamic party). They are fools if they think those communities are doing any more than biding their time waiting for their numbers to rise as they vote Labour. Labour are writing their own obituaries in those areas by not tackling immigration - they are not bringing in Labour voters.

The postal votes of women and more vulnerable members of the community are gathered up and used by the most powerful individual(s) to vote in the preferred candidate. It isn't only Jess Phillips who is worried about losing her seat.
The labour party expelled their own MPs rather than face up to this scandal. Anne Cryer and Sarah Champion were treated appallingly.

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

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

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.

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.

@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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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