Oh, you’re into public inquiries, are you? Name your top ten currently ongoing ones. That’s not as hard as it sounds, because there are currently 17 ongoing public inquiries in the UK. Sure, you’re a fan of the Covid Inquiry. Big deal. I get my kicks from the Scottish Covid Inquiry. That’s where the real public inquiry fans are.

Who could object to Kemi Badenoch’s call for a public inquiry into child sex abuse? It seems so reasonable. Are you in favour of child sex abuse? Won’t you think of the children?

Badenoch’s enthusiasm for inquiries — judge-led and on oath, of course, because it’s famously impossible to lie in court — is a natural response to the Conservatives finding themselves in opposition. Those of us who remember the early days of Ed Miliband are feeling nostalgic: in his first two years as Labour leader, his party called for at least 10 inquiries, on subjects as diverse as breast implants and school exams.

Of course when they were in government, the Tories resisted precisely the probe they now call for. On Tuesday morning the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, turned up on the BBC to tell us what, beyond the screamingly obvious, had changed. 

Jenrick explained: the previous request, the one that was quite reasonably refused, had come from a group of Oldham councillors. “There was not a request from the council itself.” Things were entirely different now. “The council have now asked.” Well blimey. Who can stand against Oldham Council if they’ve asked for something? It’s a shame that over the last 14 years no councils thought to ask for funds for libraries or social care, because if they’d only done that, the Conservatives would have simply handed over the cash, powerless to refuse in the face of A Request From A Council.

Nick Robinson, interrogating on behalf of the nation, asked why the Conservatives hadn’t taken forward the recommendations of the last national inquiry into child abuse, given how passionately they have realised they always cared about the issue? “Firstly, we have,” Jenrick replied, a hint of prissiness creeping into his voice. Although it turned out that “we have” in this particular context means “we meant to”. The legislation had been drafted, but “fell away as a result of the general election”. The timing of general elections, readers will be aware, is an act of God over which a government simply has no control, like an earthquake, or a tweet from Elon Musk. 

“You’ve been in government for 14 years!” Robinson replied. It’s a symptom of the echo chambers in which Tory politicians move that this point continually surprises them. “We now know so much more!” Jenrick said, before listing a vast number of places where abuse had been uncovered. “We need to make sure that not a single vulnerable young girl is facing torture and rape.” Although, as Robinson pointed out, it’s not entirely clear how an inquiry would achieve this. 

What though of Jenrick’s longstanding interest in the issue of grooming? “Did you raise it when you were a Home Office minister?” Robinson asked, several times, before we got an answer: “I did discuss it with the Home Secretary, although it wasn’t my portfolio.” Had Jenrick raised it in the Commons? “I wrote about this last year.” Robinson wasn’t having that. 

“You have not raised,” he said, “please correct me if my search is wrong — the issue of mass gang rape and child sex abuse that you are so energised about. You have no evidence that you raised it as a minister and no evidence that you raised it in the House of Commons.” It was like watching someone get hit by a bus going 80 miles an hour. 

“Nick,” replied Jenrick a little pathetically, “I wrote about this last year.” 

Senior Conservatives insist that their interest in this subject they haven’t ever spoken about is longstanding and passionate, going back far further than the seven days that Musk has been tweeting about it, and we should take them at their word. Although it was striking that on Monday evening Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, speaking in the Commons, demanded the government publish data on the ethnicity of perpetrators, only for Yvette Cooper to reply that it had been published two months earlier. You might expect someone as passionately concerned about the subject as Philp assures us he has long been to have noticed. He should probably set up a Google alert so that he doesn’t miss other data releases on subjects in which he will later realise he has a longstanding and passionate interest.

Jenrick never did set out what exactly a never-ending inquiry would solve. Although of course none of the people backing another vastly expensive lawyerfest say that this is what they want. Goodness, no. 

They want, in the words of Badenoch, an inquiry that will “report quickly and have clear and narrow terms of reference”. Although they also want, in the words of, um, Badenoch, to “go further than local inquiries have done”, to “examine failings among our communities, police and prosecutors, academia and charities, and local and national government” as well as “consider the likely racial and religious motivation of these crimes”. And they want, Jenrick told us, to cover 50 separate locations (as well as the others that would of course come to light in the course of the inquiry). If these are “narrow” terms of reference, it would be interesting to hear what Badenoch would consider “wide”.

Why would anyone imagine that a comprehensive inquiry, involving thousands of victims and dozens of gangs, would ever be able to “report quickly”? Even were the inquiry to start off with a small remit, it would rapidly grow. “Interested parties” would come in, each with a really good case for being included, each with a team of lawyers to ensure their perspective was represented. Anyone who thinks this would take less than five years is frankly deluded. 

Real inquiry fans know that one of the longest-running is the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. It was established in 2015, with instructions to report by 2019. It is still going, having cost £88 million, and seen six Conservative leaders. It has yet to publish any recommendations. Won’t someone think of the children?