Mick Hartley

An unreported scandal, from Julie Bindel at UnHerd:

By now, everyone is familiar with the grooming gang scandal. But few people realise how serious the problem is in London — and those who do are very reluctant to call it out. As we are only now discovering, the capital’s politicians, police and social workers are just as guilty as those pilloried Up North for conspiring to keep this growing threat out of the public eye. Rather than exposing and stopping the trafficking of girls, they have dodged the issue by saying this isn’t sexual exploitation: instead they say the girls are criminals too. They’re being recruited for “county lines”, to move and supply drugs.

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, produced exactly this deflection at the beginning of the year. Asked directly, by Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly: “Just how many grooming gangs have we got in London?”, Khan replied with an unhelpful: “The situation in London in relation to young people being groomed is different to other parts of the country.”

Sadiq Khan deflecting? Surely not.

The really shocking thing, though, is that we have been here before. While Khan keeps his own counsel, Keir Starmer’s grooming gang inquiry, which was resisted for so long, is already falling apart. Members of the initial panel have claimed that the terms of the investigation are already being watered down — expanding to include exploitation beyond the grooming gangs — and cite “a disturbing conflict of interest” regarding the identities of two possible chairs. Fiona Goddard, a member of the panel and a grooming gang victim, sent a searing note of resignation, in which she echoed a refrain which is now too all familiar: “I’m further concerned by the condescending and controlling language used towards survivors throughout this process who have had to fight every day just to be believed.”

As the scandal in London grows, the process for bringing institutions to account is in complete disarray. And last night, a fourth member of the Starmer inquiry resigned: all four women are victims; all four are sick of the continued cover-up. The question for the rest of us is: how can there ever be justice for the abused girls, and retribution for the perpetrators, if public servants such as Khan remain in denial?

They’ll do everything they can to deny the ethnic dimension. That’s been the story from the start – and it’s still the story, in northern towns and in London.