I dislike the term “playing politics.” “Playing” normally refers to games. A good move or result in chess, football, rounders or whatever can produce a rush of pleasurable adrenaline and a bad one, or outcome, periods of disappointment. But nothing serious or life changing.
That is not true of a bad outcome in politics. Hence I would describe the present shenanigans surrounding the Tories’ call for yet another enquiry into the abuse of children as “abusing politics.”
The facts are simple.
There have been several enquires into child abuse. The major one was headed by a Professor Alexis Jay and she reported to the then Conservative government in May, 2023, making 20 recommendations. That Conservative government remained in power for a further complete year, yet implemented not one of the recommendations in the report.
Then, for reasons best known to himself, Elon Musk, the American social media mogul, made accusation of complicity by British politicians in covering up child abuse.
Immediately the present Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and one of her front bench spokespersons, Robert Jenrick, expressed desperate concern about child abuse and the need to protect our “young white girls” from molestation by “gangs who do not share our culture. ”
Presumably they hoping that no one would notice that most of the proven abuses had taken place during the 14 years when their party was in power, or that they had both been ministers during that whole year when Jay’s 20 recommendations sat on the back burner with no attempt to implement them.
Or maybe they felt the media and their potential supporters would not let the facts get in the way of story they hoped would be “good” for them
This is an abuse of politics which is not just childish, it is infantile.
It is true that there is a problem of child abuse. Measure should be taken to reduce the possibility of it in the future and the present government is taking steps to implement the 20 recommendations. Maybe it should have moved faster, but it has been a hectic six months since they took power and they are not short of other problems.
There is also a problem of community relations. In most areas various immigrant communities with different cultural backgrounds settle in amiably with the native population. However, there can be outbreaks of inter-community discord, and even riots, and extreme right-wing groups have not been slow to exploit them, often on the basis of false information.
A mainstream party such as the Conservatives claim to be would be aware of the danger of inflammatory language and distortions of the truth. Instead Mrs Badenoch and her party are seeking to exploit the situation and “stir the pot” for what they hope is their own short-term political advantage..
They should be ashamed.
That is an abuse of politics. It is an embarrassment that it is taking place in a highly educated and what should be a sophisticated and mature society.
There have been several enquires into child abuse.
ReplyDeleteYes, but what there hasn’t been is an inquiry into the way that various agencies and local authorities conspired to cover up mass child sexual abuse due to the ethnic / community dynamics in play in those areas.
Nobody disputes that that happened, and that it happened in more than one area. That’s why a national inquiry is needed because local inquiries can look at what happened in their particular areas, but a national inquiry is needed to look at all the different instance so as to spot patterns and make sure no such cover-ups ever happen again.
Immediately the present Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, , and one of her front bench spokespersons, Robert Jenrick, expressed desperate concern about child abuse and the need to protect our “young white girls” from molestation by “gangs who do not share our culture. ”
ReplyDeleteYou put the words ‘young white girls’ in quotation marks there. Does that mean you have an example of either of those people using those exact words? Because I find it hard to believe that they would use those words, not least because they will be aware that not all the victims were ‘white’ (in particular Sikh girls were often preyed upon, also being viewed by the perpetrators as ‘not counting’ due to not being from their community).
So if you do have an example of either of them using those words could you point to it?
A quick Google search found one example of the phrase ‘young white girls’ in this context, but it wasn’t used by Badenoch or Jenrick:
Delete‘ Mohammed Shafiq told Sky News: "There is a minority of criminals involved in sexual abuse of children in on-street gang grooming who view white girls as worthless.’
https://news.sky.com/story/sex-abuse-gangs-view-white-girls-as-worthless-and-trash-10982586
re The "young white girls," I am quoting from memory, as accurately as I can, from a long interview with Mr Jenrick on the Radio 4 "Today" programme on Monday or more probably Tuesday of this week. I think it was the 08h10 "slot." My honest recollection is hat he sued the phrase several time, and was very excited about it. Like you, I was rather surprised that he should be so specific.
ReplyDeleteIt was Tuesday. There's a report of in in the Independent here:
Deletehttps://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/robert-jenrick-nick-robinson-bbc-grooming-gangs-clash-b2675062.html
but I've failed to find the actual programme. Astonishingly "Today" 7th January on the BBC website says "No matches found." I clearly have not yet developed the appropriate skills.
Mea culpa; you can hearth complete interview here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026nbs
Come in at 2 hours 12 minutes. He repeatedly refers to "young girls" but only once "selected by the victims becasue they are white." So my quote is not entirely accurate and I apologise.
I thought so. To say we need to protect ‘our young white girls’ would imply that they thought that other girls were not worth protecting, and clearly neither Jenrick nor Badenoch thinks that girls who are not ‘white’ don’t deserve to be protected (and indeed, as I pointed out above, many of the victims of the Pakistani grooming-rape gangs were not ‘white’ and they deserve justices too).
DeleteSo do "young boys," those of any age with learning difficulties, or indeed anyone who is vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteSo do "young boys,"
DeleteWell yes, but they aren’t in danger from Pakistani grooming-rape gangs.
(Actually that’s not quite true: at least one little boy was threatened to stop his sister from going to the police).
That is an abuse of politics. It is an embarrassment that it is taking place in a highly educated and what should be a sophisticated and mature society.
ReplyDeleteI was recently reminded that your beloved Liberal Democrats do the same thing: for example, when the proposed an amendment immediately banning all sewerage discharges into rivers, despite knowing full well that although this is a laudable aim, trying to do it immediately would be impossible with our current infrastructure without leading to sewerage coming back up people’s toilets and out of drains in the streets.
But then when the government voted against the amendment — which it had to, as obviously no responsible government could enact such a damaging thing — the Liberal Democrats published pictures of every Conservative MP who voted against it saying they were ‘in favour of dumping sewage into rivers’.
This is just part of politics, and no party is above it; but by contrast calling for an investigation into how Pakistani grooming-rape gangs were covered up and allowed to continue for so long is per se noble, even if the timing is motivated by cynical calculation and those who didn’t launch such an inquiry when they were in office can reasonably by accused of not a little hypocrisy.
Here's a quote this morning from the blog Mainly acro (qv) which sums up my view.
Delete"For Farage, Musk and the Conservative party, anything that highlights the awful exploitation and criminality that happened in Oldham, Rotherham and elsewhere, and which was for far too long ignored by the authorities, is gold dust. Not only does it feed the old racist trope that some groups, in this case Mulsims or immigrants, are criminals and rapists, but it also allows them to show that concerns about racism can sometimes have negative effects. They know that individual stories selected to fit their racist agenda are for many voters more powerful than the statistics that say race, religion, or immigration is not the issue when it comes to men sexually exploiting women and girls."
the statistics that say race, religion, or immigration is not the issue when it comes to men sexually exploiting women and girls.
DeleteBut the statistics actually say the opposite — the statistics show that Muslim immigrants from a particular region of Pakistan are hugely over represented as sexual exploiters of girls, relative to their proportion of the general population.
If the ‘blog from which you get your opinion is wrong about such a basic matter of fact then perhaps you shouldn’t be outsourcing your thinking to it?
(It’s very important to remember that as far as I am aware it’s not ‘Muslims’ who are over-represented as sexual exploiters of children, nor ‘immigrants’: the problem is specifically with the culture of this one region in Pakistan (and not all Pakistan, just this one region). So solving the problem doesn’t require being anti-immigration; we could simply block immigration from that region while allowing it from other places, on the grounds that immigrants from that region tend on balance to have a more negative than positive effect on the country whereas immigrants from other places tend to have a more positive than negative effect.)
Delete