Or are they using grooming gangs as a euphemism for Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, emphasis on the ethnic links / brotherhood / racial animus motivation aspect as well as diversity coverups etc (so someone raped by a white grooming gang would not be included)
I think this is the thing for me - not simply the rape but the organised crime/extended family aspect which also ties into corruption, political coverups etc.
On whether it could be extended - there's been the historical institutional abuse inquiry in Northern Ireland, which is not only Catholic institutions but e.g. children's homes run by other denominations or on a non-religious basis. That works because it's basically the same thing.
I think one of the problems is that we feel uncomfortable saying we're going to be investigating crimes associated with a particular ethnic group. That's a strong motivation, apart from any other incentives, to look for anything vaguely similar that could be bolted on.
So we keep hearing about "white grooming gangs", and I allow it's possible that there are predominantly or exclusively white gangs that use similar tactics, but that misses out the important angle of racial/religious animus and the difference in ethnicity between perpetrators and victims. So it's not really the same.
Or if we're talking about sex crimes among ethnic minorities - there's an ongoing problem of sex abuse in certain Hasidic Jewish groups, and they're difficult for outsiders to penetrate, but there the abuse is internally directed and doesn't impact on the surrounding community. So not the same.
The closest you might come is the Albanian gangs who run most of the sex trade in London, but that also misses out a lot of the important angles. The racial/religious animus isn't really there, and institutional support for the gangs will mostly be a matter of bent coppers.
So I don't think there's a direct equivalent. The distinctive things about the Pakistani grooming gangs are the racial/religious aspect with the targeting of out-group victims; the very dense extended family networks involved; and the institutional corruption in a whole series of towns and cities involving police, local councils and social services, with the Labour Party at the hub.
It's that last bit, the institutional corruption bit, that terrifies Labour, because if the truth comes out it could destroy them across the North and Midlands, and the more they cover up, the worse the blowback will be.