Mick Hartley

If good people ignore unpleasant facts that threaten their world view, then bad people will step in. Janice Turner in the Times this morning:

Eyes blazing, a clearly furious Baroness Casey, sitting on the Newsnight sofa beside two grooming gang victims, reflected on what she’d learnt in the decade since her Rotherham report. “If good people don’t grip difficult issues,” she said, “in my experience bad people do.”

She recalled reading a file on a child who had been raped to find in the perpetrator’s description someone had Tippexed out the word “Pakistani”. As she picked this off with a paperclip, Casey wondered what had driven this person to literally whitewash the facts. Fear for their organisation’s reputation or their own? Worry for “community tensions”? Meanwhile the English Defence League had parked up, intimidating every Muslim in town.

Definitions of “good” and “bad” may vary. But it is inarguable that the reason Baroness Casey will now head up a second, even more sweeping, inquiry into grooming gangs is agitation by Elon Musk, JD Vance, Tommy Robinson and his far- right associates. Their prime motive is not concern for thousands of abused, betrayed girls, but cynical opportunism. They want to leverage the gangs (and a perceived establishment cover-up) against all Muslims for wider political ends.

As Casey says, it’s because the “good” people — or rather those who identify as such — refused to engage with the truth. Even after Casey reviewed the data and found British Pakistani men over-represented in grooming cases and even after numerous convictions, many “good” people still dispute this distinct abuse model even exists. “It’s a racist fantasy…” you still hear, or “most abusers are white men…” Political Tippex.

Not just the grooming gangs, of course. See also, gender:

In the US, on Joe Biden’s very first day as president he issued an executive order that redefined “sex” in Title IX women’s rights protections to incorporate gender identity. In doing so, entirely without debate, he permitted biological males to compete in (and inevitably dominate) female sports, and for any male-bodied prisoner, including rapists and murderers, unrestricted transfer into women’s jails. Moreover Biden appointed the trans activist Rachel Levine, who opposed any lower age limit on cross-sex hormones or gender surgery for children, as an adviser.

This week the US Supreme Court upheld the right of Tennessee to ban such treatments for minors, which will strengthen existing bans in 25 other states. In Britain, thanks to the courage of whistleblowing medics and gender critical feminists, this was accomplished some years back via the Cass review. But in America, as the New York Times puts it, “the LGBTQ movement drove itself towards a cliff — and took the Democratic Party with it”. Since US liberals doubled down, championing mastectomies for 14-year-old girls and cheering on boys stealing female track medals, it was left to the Maga movement to grab the easy popular, political win. But, of course, Trump didn’t stop at reversing extreme gender policies — he has also ripped up basic rights, such as cruelly banning trans people from serving in the military.

Biden left an open goal. Of course Trump took advantage. 

“Good” people need to grip harder, be braver, embrace complexity over slogans, stop Tippexing out the truth. Thoughtful Muslims, such as Baroness Warsi, should investigate the cultural and religious reasons towns such as Dewsbury, where she grew up, have produced rings of Pakistani men who pimp out poor white girls. Democrats could defend women’s sports and oppose the baseless mutilation of minors. Because when they don’t, as Baroness Casey says, the “bad” people can’t wait to do it for them.

I'm not sure, from what I've seen of her, that I'd call Baroness Warsi "thoughtful". Still, yes…

From a comment:

When difficult issues – grooming gangs, uncontrolled migration – are handled with denial or euphemism a political vacuum opens up. And into that vacuum step those less concerned with nuance. Historian Tom Holland has noted that the most sensitive issue is not ethnicity, but religion: the fact that ISIS justified sexual slavery by citing early Islamic texts is deeply uncomfortable – yet undeniably part of the context. When mainstream parties sidestep such realities, they hand ready ammunition to populists. What begins as moral squeamishness ends in political forfeiture. Reform isn’t polling well because its ideas are better – it’s because too many others stopped talking.

The story of the grooming gangs is the story of predominantly Muslim men in northern towns. Labour's answer to this? A law against "Islamophobia":

Angela Rayner is accused of wanting to secretly drive through a definition of Islamophobia that could make it harder to discuss grooming gangs.

The Deputy Prime Minister has appointed a working group to come up with a definition to be used across government.

It is chaired by Dominic Grieve, the former Tory Cabinet minister, who has praised a 2019 study that called the discussion of “grooming gangs” an example of “anti-Muslim racism”.