When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions. And it’s certainly been another miserably overwhelming week for the Labour government. Elon Musk, and a host of other critics, have been going after Keir Starmer for his and Jess Phillips’ decision to refuse a national inquiry into the grooming gangs in Oldham. Keir Starmer is furiously angry about the grooming scandal. Unfortunately, what he is mostly angry about seems to be those attacking his record, rather than the rape gangs. 

Before we get to what was wrong with his response, and there was a great deal, we should first understand where he and his supporters are coming from. Musk is ill-informed, unconcerned with the truth and making reckless assertions, and he is doing so from a massive social media platform, on the eve of his becoming an official in the US government. Musk and his allies have attacked Starmer and Jess Phillips, both of whom believe they have taken a substantive role in fighting against sexual abuse.

From inside No 10, the situation feels desperately unfair, and manipulated by an irresponsible right wing press and social media. Labour refused a national inquiry into abuse in Oldham, instead encouraging the council to hold its own, as many others had already done so with some success. In this judgement, they were backed by none other than Professor Alexis Jay, who led the previous national inquiry in 2015, and who argues that another inquiry will just delay justice and vitally needed reforms. The government says they are intent on implementing her recommendations, and point out that much of the inaction happened on the watch of the Conservative Party. Labour allies understandably wonder where this anger on the issue has been for the last ten years, when the Conservatives were at the helm, and in a position to do something about it. 

From Labour’s perspective, the issue they are handling responsibly is being turned into a cynical political football by a Right that cares little about white working class girls, and quite a lot about using migration to rack up votes. Reform, led by Nigel Farage, has been unrelenting online and in the press condemning Keir Starmer personally. Robert Jenrick attacked the culture of British Pakistanis in a statement that so offended the political Left that the leader of the Lib Dems called on him to resign. Aside from divisive language, an amendment mandating a national inquiry was added by the Tories to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which Labour says could kill the legislation and endanger children. 

You can see why Labour feels it needs to be combative and set the record straight. Unfortunately, this approach is a catastrophic error of political judgment, and reveals severe moral failings in Starmer’s approach to leadership. Put aside the wild exaggerations bandied about online, and forget about the sickening tussle in Westminster to lay the blame at a rival party’s door. What actually matters here? The truth, public safety, and justice for victims. 

In this situation Starmer isn’t the former head of the CPS, he isn’t even the leader of the Labour Party — he is the leader of this country, and the representative of the British crown. The grooming gang scandal touches every political party and level of government. Police, courts, social workers, local councils, and the national government all failed victims, and many colluded in their victimisation. The seriousness of Musk’s claims, which millions of people saw, needed to be addressed, but ultimately Musk is a private individual living in America, making these allegations on social media. A simple statement setting the record straight from a spokesperson was all that it merited, and the Prime Minister personally responding was wildly disproportionate. For all that Musk is an adolescent throwing fuel on the fire of British politics, he is also a father and a human being encountering, probably for the first time, reports of the British police allowing thousands of children to be raped and, in at least one case, killed, out of a fear of appearing racist. His untruths and half truths are unforgivably irresponsible from the owner of a social media company, but his anger was entirely legitimate. 

Faced with this digitally accelerated anger, most political leaders make critical errors

Politics in the internet age is increasingly defined by rage, often cynically channeled to serve partisan ends. Faced with this digitally accelerated anger, most political leaders make critical errors. First of all, they mistake the channel of the anger for the source, which is often a genuine grievance. Secondly, they are unaware of their own ideological and tribal instincts, and are unable to set them aside.

Especially on the centre-left, not only is the distinction between legitimate grievance and right-wing manipulation not made, the two are often intentionally conflated to dismiss claims that don’t serve the liberal narrative as “fake news”. Jess Phillips is certainly no “rape genocide apologist”, as Musk has claimed, and has played an important part in helping victims. However, Phillips’ partisanship has led her to overlook problems like the grooming gang in the past, as in 2016 when she claimed that the German New Year’s Eve sexual assaults (in which over 1,000 victims were attacked in a single night by gangs of asylum seekers) was nothing to do with migration, and very similar to what happens “on Broad Street in Birmingham every week”. 

One can well understand the frustration of those like Julie Bindel, who have been fearlessly reporting on this issue for years without any party political agenda, that politicians of both Left and Right only care about sexual violence when it serves their narrative. As I wrote earlier this week, the grooming gangs scandal involved not only a “woke” refusal to go after ethnic minority perpetrators, but also vile classist and sexist attitudes about working class teenage girls. 

The reality is that the British establishment, whether of the centre left or right, embodies a kind of “progressive conservatism” in which the economic and institutional status quo is preserved even as a sort of bohemian faux-radicalism is destructively unleashed on the most vulnerable parts of society. Thus you see social workers too progressive to deny teenage girls in foster care the “right” to come and go at all hours with Pakistani “boyfriends”, and a police force too conservative to investigate claims of abuse by girls they believe to be promiscuous. 

So what should be done about our rotten establishment, and the rotten system that offered children up as playthings for gangs of Pakistani men? And what should our Prime Minister be saying and doing now? There are arguments for and against a national inquiry. The obsession with process over principle and action is how we got here, and you can understand why many oppose an inquiry. All that is needed at this stage is a clear indication from the government that they will be proactive, not reactive on this issue. Whilst Oldham is begging for an inquiry, and will no doubt take action on its own, there are still councils that are blocking justice, as in Keighley and Bradford, where the local council has refused calls for an inquiry into grooming. Leaving it to local government is not good enough, especially when social workers, cops and courts still take their cues from Whitehall. 

Police forces need to be directed to investigate historic and current crimes of this nature actively. Those who acted negligently need to be fired, or prosecuted. The perpetrators need to be behind bars for life, and anyone involved, however indirectly, should face deportation. The legal and regulatory architecture that encouraged racially selective policing needs to be dismantled, and explicit measures instituted to heavily penalise those who ignore crime in the name of “community relations”. Whatever it takes to get this done, whether it’s an inquiry or legislation or both, needs to happen, and the government needs to commit to this, and a timeline, immediately. 

… it looks like the public is once again to be sacrificed on the altar of the public sector

As well as outlining a strategy, Starmer has another duty, one that no British Prime Minister has yet performed. He needs to issue an apology to the thousands of victims whose lives were ruined by the inaction of the British state. Keir Starmer made such an apology to the victims of Grenfell, but he has yet to make one for the victims of Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham and a dozen other gangs. 

If Starmer had issued an apology on behalf of the state to victims, and made a commitment to a new, far more serious approach to grooming gangs, he would have proven Musk wrong, and shown he understands what matters in this equation. Instead, he has gotten down in the mud with his critics, whilst doing nothing about the actual problem. It’s reflective of a pattern of behaviour from the Labour leadership in which they mindlessly defend the public sector, even when it has failed catastrophically. Rather than admitting that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and that the British state is in need of reform, it looks like the public is once again to be sacrificed on the altar of the public state.