Keir Starmer is addicted to inquiries. He loves an independent commission, and never met an expert-led investigation that he didn’t like. In his election winning manifesto, he promised to right historical wrongs, with new reports into the Battle of Orgreave, and the so-called Windrush scandal. “Without justice and the truth,” says Starmer, “victims and their families cannot move forward.”

But for the man who loves inquiries, a government-led report into the industrial-scale rape of British girls by migrant grooming gangs is one inquiry too far. Indeed, when Prime Minister Starmer lists national scandals where “truth and justice” was denied by public authorities, grooming gangs do not even merit a mention.

As the conversation about our national grooming gang tragedy reaches a fever pitch, it fell to Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips to reject Oldham Council’s call for a government-led inquiry into child sexual exploitation. An outspoken feminist, it appears that Phillips’ advocacy for women doesn’t extend as far as the white working class girls who were raped, tortured, and trafficked by Oldham’s Pakistani grooming gang.

This atrocity tarnished the lives of hundreds of young girls in the town. One girl, Sophie, was 12-years-old when she was abducted from Oldham Police Station and raped by seven men. When Sophie reported this abuse, Greater Manchester Police did not even record the incident as a crime. When she later reported her grooming to the local council authorities, a social worker claimed that she was “prone to fantasise”.

So why does Phillips oppose an inquiry? She claims it is “for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally” — a tall, though not impossible, order for a local authority. Does she fear that a review would uncover the extent of institutional complicity? The state never emerges from such inquiries unscathed. One also can’t help wondering if Phillips — who, at the last General Election, narrowly triumphed in her heavily Muslim Birmingham Yardley constituency over Jody McIntyre, a Muslim candidate campaigning on the issue of Gaza — fears upsetting her constituents.

Unfortunately, Oldham is not an isolated incident. It is one of more than fifty British towns and cities which has been scarred by migrant grooming gangs. In communities across the country, gangs of men — disproportionately of Pakistani origin — groomed and raped thousands of young girls. 

In many of these towns, girls were targeted specifically because they were white, while local officials covered up the scale of the abuse in part because of fears of being called racist or destabilising community relations. Politicians, social workers, journalists, judges, police officers, and lawyers were all complicit. Victims were disbelieved, slandered, and ignored; their parents were often punished for taking direct action against the gangs grooming their children. These crimes took place over decades — and in many communities, are almost certainly still taking place.

At every level, the British state has failed to address this tragedy. Politicians have failed upwards, while whistleblowers have been slandered as bigots. Comprehensive reports have been produced in just three cases — Telford, Rotherham, and Rochdale. 

… unfortunately, for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, some things matter more than justice

If the Labour Party was serious about bringing “justice and the truth” to victims, they would conduct comprehensive inquiries in each of the towns scarred by grooming gangs. They would enlist the help of figures like the journalist Charlie Peters, who — as Mr Peters wrote for The Critic last year — have been lonely, dogged voices covering the issue. They would name and shame perpetrators; foreign national offenders would be deported. Those complicit in the cover-up would be fired, prosecuted, and barred from seeking public office. If victims really mattered to the Labour Party, they would compensate those who have had their lives ruined — and they would put policies in place to ensure that this never happens again.

But unfortunately, for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, some things matter more than justice. For Jess Phillips, delivering justice for the girls of Oldham might mean risking her seat at the next General Election. For the Labour Party as a whole, admitting the scale of state failure on migrant grooming gangs would also mean admitting our national failure on immigration and integration. After all, how can Britain be called an “integration miracle” (as the old Scottish saying goes) when towns across the country have been ravaged by this explicitly racialised crime?

Addressing Britain’s grooming gang horror will probably be impossible for Starmer’s Labour, which has built so much of its identity around the idea that Britain should celebrate diversity as a strength. The party’s reliance on Muslim voters makes this already-tall order even taller.

But as a country, it is long past time that we accepted this issue for what it really is: the biggest national scandal since the Second World War, and one of the most horrific impacts of mass migration. One day soon, the political right will be back in power. When that day comes, it must deliver meaningful justice for those girls who had their lives ruined by migrant grooming gangs — and by a political establishment which turned a blind eye to their suffering.