I posted this Tweet last night in response to what I consider to be the openly racist comments from the Home Secretary on child grooming yesterday:
It is only a few weeks since a woman was jailed for promoting falsehoods about grooming gangs. The harm she caused was widely noted. Today Suella Braverman was doing something not that different on national television, making false claims which could incite racial hatred.
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) April 2, 2023
The deeply political claims Suella Braverman made are summarised in the video in this Tweer:
“Justice hasn't been done”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman says “senior politicians in Labour-run areas” failed to prevent cases of child sexual abuse because they did not want to “call out people along ethnic lines”#BBCLauraK https://t.co/Ew6VAOMapy pic.twitter.com/pNN1JLLbLf
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 2, 2023
In summary, Braverman's argument is that there are grooming gangs; they are mainly Asian; they mainly operate in Labour-controlled local authority areas and because of political correctness Labour does nothing about them.
Staggeringly she is not alone in making this claim. As the Guardian notes this morning:
Rishi Sunak is to announce new measures to tackle grooming gangs on Monday, claiming that “political correctness” would not get in the way of a crackdown, while his home secretary was accused of “dog whistle” rhetoric over child sexual exploitation.
A new grooming gang taskforce will be set up with specialist officers, supported by the National Crime Agency, helping local forces and offering the use of ethnicity data to assist police investigations.
They added:
Before the announcement, Sunak warned that for too long “political correctness has stopped us from weeding out vile criminals who prey on children and young women”. He added: “We will stop at nothing to stamp out these dangerous gangs.”
His claim is as wrong as Bravermans. As the Guardian also note:
An official report by the Home Office in 2020 concluded that most child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30, adding that there was not enough evidence to suggest members of grooming gangs were disproportionately more likely to be Asian or black.
I believe the Home Office.
Just as I believe that these gangs also largely operate in larger towns and cities, which happen to vote Labour, which proves nothing about causality.
What I do not believe is that there is any political correctness in evidence.
Instead, this is openly racist. dog-whistling politics of the very lowest order. It is very hard to differentiate its open abuse of the facts, coupled with its obviously racist element, from fascism. And I am sure that those promoting it know that. I give them credit for not being stupid. Those who used fascist techniques do not do so by chance: they do so deliberately, having studied what they are.
Why are they doing this? First, they must believe it the right thing to do. I leave that fact for others to ponder on. But I can see no other reason for this open racist hostility.
Second, they think that they will get away with their lies. To make sure that happens we can expect these claims to be repeated, endlessly. That is what the Goebbels handbook requires.
Third, expect Labour to be ineffective in response, not least because the truth is so hard to promote in these situations where what is being opposed is an outright lie. The Tories know that.
Fourth, expect a civil society response - to be followed about threats to those who say anything because, it will be claimed, they are acting politically when doing so. As Orwell once said:
Where are we then this morning? It seems to me that the next round of attack from the fascists has been opened by Braverman. That is sickening, because no one would condone child grooming. It is disgusting, because she is politicising the issue when unity of action is required. And it is appalling because of the explicit racist attacks she, and now Sunak, are making.
This is the state of the UK in 2023.
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It’s the failures to act that causes concern
Did they occur in disproportion, geographically or by ethnicity? We don’t know
The Home Office report is flawed. What they should have done is to subtract the cases where Local Authority intervention was prompt, and then analyse the remainder for patterns.
There were failures to act up to 2013.
Not now. A report released last year showed no similar prevalence of the grooming gang problem 8 years on, and authorities are working collaboratively and alive to all reports.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-61568063
So the authorities are across the issue. You should be satisfied with that.
As for the Home office report you say is “flawed”… well you would say that wouldn’t you?
Try considering the children and families of the grooming and the suffering and damage caused by the grooming gangs.
I do
What I am sting is consider the victims of a,, grooming gangs, and the majority are white
Why do you only care about a few victims? Please explain
The one observation I might make on these cases, and of course on many others involving the poor and vulnerable, and I might add that it predates Austerity is that they did clearly highlight a major element of poor services for poor people.
Might I suggest that not only do we need better resourced Social Care and Police Services but some sort of ‘Tribune’ whose role is to make sure that these services are working
‘Predates austerity’.
John – when I look at the 20th century in this country, it is dominated by austerity which to my mind at least has been normalised – part of the everyday normal management mind set of this country.
When austerity is formally announced as policy is merely where things are just going to get much worse than the norm.
After reading Clara Mattei’s ‘ The Capital Order’ my own mindset has changed.
Austerity is the normal mode of management of government because it makes the rich richer and that is the basis of our ‘democracy’ unfortunately.
In other words, there a very few periods in this country where austerity has not been practiced. It is institutionalised John.
That is my conclusion.
I absolutely agree, Im reading Clara’s book just now and the parallels are scary, especially when we know where they ended up.
“Second, they think that they will get away with their lies. To make sure that happens we can expect these claims to be repeated, endlessly.”
No doubt at all, but they will also use the following absurd argument: if anyone challenges the policy (or any of it’s real-life implications) they will be accused of being in favour of child abuse. No matter how absurd this might seem, it will be amplified by the usual media suspects and, if challenged themselves, any lukewarm retraction will be buried out of sight. Witness the disgraceful way Starmer was falsely accused of protecting Jimmy Savile.
You are right
I have already been accused of that many times on Twitter
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth
In fact, what they are doing is turning a blind eye to most of the problem
“An official report by the Home Office in 2020 concluded that most child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30, adding that there was not enough evidence to suggest members of grooming gangs were disproportionately more likely to be Asian or black.”
As was noted by two experts in the field on Today prior to the 7 o’clock news. And they also both agree that Braverman’s remarks were therefore false, would encourage the far right, and pander to a racist agenda.
So Braverman, a British Asian herself, is (a) lying, and (b) encouraging racisits. And Sunak is doing this too by wittering on about ‘political correctness’ stopping invstigation of child abuse. So he, another British Asian, is doing the same as his appointment for Home Secretary, Braverman.
So this the tories’ election strategy, no doubt dream up, as PSR would point out, by the Isaac Levido ‘strategist (euphemism for liar/propagandist). To endlessly play culture wars because they have no real policies to fix any of Britain’s problems, most of which are their fault now anyway, and because they have zero moral or intellectual integrity.
A question: do Sunak and Braverman have a problem with their own ethnicity? I just wonder as they (and Braverman, in particular) consistently attack people who are or of non-white origin. First it was refugees. Now it’s non-white people in their own country. Then again, nowadays if you want to get on in right wing politics you’ve got to be prepared to say just about anything so long as it riles up the ‘base’ – as we see on a regular basis in the US. Sadly, it’s now becoming a pretty well established practice here.
You could add for example Priti Patel, and Kemi Badenoch.
The gender and ethic diversity at the top of the Conservative government is interesting, isn’t it. Perhaps we have reached the stage where only non-white people – perhaps non-white women – can say things that would otherwise be instantly condemned as racist.
This kind of divisive rhetoric is wrong, whoever utters it.
Agreed
It’s absolutely disgusting this and it is the political science of fascism once more at work.
But what is also sad is that Braverman etc., know that there are people who will fall for it.
What might be the reasons for the interviewer being apparently less well informed than you?
Why might the interviewer not have mentioned the under-resourcing of the social support and legal systems as significant contributory factors?
To what extent might the interview have been rehearsed?
I am not sure I follow your questions
Sorry
Sunak has been presented to us as some kind of more moderate face of the Tories. His actions of recent weeks over immigration and grooming have exposed him as being every bit as divisive as the worst of them. Or just cynically prepared to do anything to rile up what they now see as their ‘base’.
A recent article talked about how the National Front morphed into the BNP, which in turn morphed into UKIP, which the Tory party has now become its zombie form. The statements we are hearing now from cabinet and senior members of the Tories, repeated and defended by their MPs, would have got them thrown out of the party in the days of the BNP. Not any more.
That those statements, nationalist and racist, come from the mouths of Patel, Braverman, Badenoch and Sunak is especially depressing. As Andrew says, they are being allowed to get away with it.
Might this interview have been a disguised party political broadcast?
What was the proportion of genuine reporter investigation and and what a presentation of opportunities for party political presentation?
Which interview?