The next grooming-gangs cover-up

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Political correctness was at the heart of the grooming-gangs scandal. The authorities refused to protect vulnerable girls from mainly Pakistani Muslim men out of a fear of being called racist. Although the Labour government has now announced a grooming-gangs inquiry, it clearly still doesn’t understand how we got here. After all, this week, it also announced further steps to define and crack down on ‘Islamophobia’ across government departments and agencies. This really ought to ring alarm bells. The ‘APPG definition’ of Islamophobia, which is already used for internal Labour Party matters, dismisses the grooming-gangs phenomenon as a racist trope. It claims that talk of ‘sex groomers’ is inherently anti-Muslim. If this definition is adopted, the state would once again be paralysed to stop – or even to discuss – these sickening crimes. Victims would once again be sacrificed to avoid causing offence. If Labour truly wants a reckoning with the rape gangs, it also needs a reckoning with its own stifling – and apparently never-ending – desire to police what people can say and think.