Keir Starmer’s Labour government is under fire for its refusal to set up a national inquiry into the phenomenon of so-called grooming gangs—organised rapists operating across multiple British towns.
Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk has amplified the row, claiming Jess Phillips MP “deserves to be in prison” over the “disgraceful” decision. Correspondence shows Phillips, the Home Office’s parliamentary under-secretary of state for safeguarding—who is responsible for addressing violence against women and girls—rejected calls for a government investigation into ‘historic’ sex abuse in Oldham, Greater Manchester, that would have the power to compel witnesses to testify.
Instead, Phillips has stated that the decision to conduct such an inquiry should remain the sole responsibility of the municipal authority requesting it. In effect, by trying to keep it local, Labour is blocking a public reckoning with Starmer’s role as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) during its investigation of the Oldham child grooming scandal.
To an already angry electorate, this is no mere administrative technicality. At least as far back as 2012, when Starmer was the director of public prosecutions (DPP) running the CPS, whistleblowers claimed they were told that no action should be taken because of the ethnic origin of the alleged perpetrators, in the name of ‘maintaining good community relations.’ This echoes similar events in other towns, including Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford.
White, working-class girls, often from troubled family backgrounds or in municipal care, or both, came under the control of British Pakistani ‘boyfriends.’ Plied with alcohol and drugs and threatened with violence, they were then passed around large groups of men and raped multiple times. Initially, their graphic witness testimony was dismissed and the thousands of victims—according to an independent study, 1,400 in Rotherham alone—some as young as 11, were treated as having brought this on themselves through bad lifestyle choices.
Across British towns, Labour councillors and the police ducked this issue for fear of being called racist. White working class Britons were treated as a race riot in the making, awaiting the slightest provocation by smalltown ‘Asian’ sexual criminals. As the news of an emerging pattern of similar local incidents spread, the Labour Party lashed out at the ‘Murdoch press’ and a handful of its own representatives, including Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, a relatively early critic of the cover-up. Labour also called on the courts to suppress the scandal.
To date, most local investigations—like the one Phillips is attempting to foist back on Oldham itself—show a pattern of threats, cover-ups, and police and local politicians intervening on behalf of the alleged perpetrators, often going back to the 1990s. By 2020, even Starmer admitted his surprise as DPP at how many convicted rape gang members from northwest England were arrested and then released without charge.
While known offences date back decades, prosecutions were, until recently, rare—with light punishments for those convicted. Throughout the towns affected by the problem, victims would report how years later they would encounter their tormentors on the street or in supermarkets. A taskforce set up by the previous Tory government claims to have initiated some 550 arrests, but for many observers this seems too little, too late.
Phillips presents herself as a no-nonsense crusader for justice but seems to have a blind spot on the issue of ‘grooming’ (i.e., rape) gangs. One explanation for this could be her slim parliamentary majority of just 693, which she barely clung onto when faced with a rival ‘pro-Palestinian’ candidate and her frequent conflict with local Muslims. Or perhaps she shares the wider cowardice of the political establishment, with online and academic campaigners like associate professor Ella Cockbain dismissing the problem as a ‘moral panic.’
In contrast, journalists such as GB News’ Charlie Peters have continued to pursue the issue relentlessly. Peters’ work was even echoed in recent opportunistic statements from erstwhile Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick and current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, although this raises the question of why so little coordinated action was taken against the gangs during 14 years of Tory rule.
