What unites the right like nothing else? Grooming gangs. And the Conservatives have kicked off 2025 by placing it front and centre. “The time is long overdue for a full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal…No one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.” Kemi Badenoch posted on X yesterday. Reform MPs and Elon Musk, who have been driving this online, have echoed this call.
And in some ways, I agree. There is no doubt that thousands of young girls have been brutalised in the worst ways possible by groups of revolting men. There is no doubt that authorities cowered from the truth and did nowhere near enough. There is no doubt that the victims were treated with disdain, while the perpretators weren’t. I’m reminded of the police officers who came across Bannaras Hussain, a member of the Rotherham grooming gang, in their car park while he was assaulting a girl and just went about their day. Years later he was convicted for 10 charges including rape, indecent assault, procuring a woman to become a prostitute and actual bodily harm after having abused seven girls. This was not an isolated incident. There are so many young women living with the after effects of this trauma, so many men responsible potentially still walking free, and so many gaps in provision for vulnerable children. No-one can guarantee that grooming gangs are finished business.
However, this litany of horror and failings has so often been exploited as a recruitment opportunity by the anti-immigrant far-Right. Misinformation from the likes of Tommy Robinson, currently in prison for contempt of court after flouting a High Court order with untrue allegations about a young Syrian refugee who he falsely claimed had “violently attack[ed] young English girls in his school”, has added fuel to this fire.
Pakistani men have been overrepresented in reported grooming gang cases, and the left should not shy away from recognising this, but are they overrepresented as paedophiles? The data simply isn’t there.
Improved research was called for back in 2022 when a national inquiry into all child sex abuse — bear in mind, 33% of contact sexual offences against children are committed by family members — reported its findings. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry made 19 other recommendations including an amendment to the Children Act 1989 and a cabinet-level Minister for Children. By April 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak committed to "clamp down on grooming gangs”, but as Professor Alexis Jay, the chair author of the inquiry so diplomatically put it, “I welcome these announcements, some of which reflect the recommendations of the Inquiry’s own report.”
While Elon Musk accuses Keir Starmer of the “rape of Britain” for having presided over the Crown Prosecution Service that, doubtless, made mistakes on grooming gangs, what was Kemi Badenoch up to when Rishi Sunak promised to deliver on only some of the Inquiry’s recommendations? Well, she was part of his government, serving as Minister for Women and Equalities no less.
Perhaps it’s more thrilling to call for an inquiry than to act on a previous one. Perhaps it’s easier to suggest the current system is out to fail vulnerable people. But there are those who have begun the hard work of analysing child abuse and identifying how to tackle the root causes. If immigration were to be banned tomorrow, and people deported, the issue wouldn’t be resolved.
For Badenoch to call out the current Labour government’s record on grooming gangs while having been a member of a government that sat on the Inquiry’s recommendation until now suggests she is not in this for the right reasons. Could it be that she’s not actually up for building on others’ hard work to help vulnerable and exploited children and perhaps more focused on upping her own polling?
Sophie Wilkinson is a freelance journalist
