{"id":69045,"date":"2023-04-03T07:42:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T06:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=69045"},"modified":"2023-04-03T07:42:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T06:42:38","slug":"the-next-round-of-attack-from-the-fascists-has-been-opened-by-braverman-this-is-the-state-of-the-uk-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/04\/03\/the-next-round-of-attack-from-the-fascists-has-been-opened-by-braverman-this-is-the-state-of-the-uk-in-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"The next round of attack from the fascists has been opened by Braverman. This is the state of the UK in 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">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.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardJMurphy\/status\/1642596638064615424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The deeply political claims Suella Braverman made are summarised in the video in this Tweer:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cJustice hasn\u2019t been done\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Home Secretary Suella Braverman says \u201csenior politicians in Labour-run areas\u201d failed to prevent cases of child sexual abuse because they did not want to \u201ccall out people along ethnic lines\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BBCLauraK?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BBCLauraK<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Ew6VAOMapy\">https:\/\/t.co\/Ew6VAOMapy<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pNN1JLLbLf\">pic.twitter.com\/pNN1JLLbLf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BBCPolitics\/status\/1642460059560034304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div id=\"sign-in-gate\">\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Staggeringly she is not alone in making this claim. As the Guardian notes this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"dcr-n6w1lc\">Rishi Sunak is to announce new measures to tackle grooming gangs on Monday, claiming that \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d would not get in the way of a crackdown, while his home secretary was accused of \u201cdog whistle\u201d rhetoric over child sexual exploitation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-n6w1lc\">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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>They added:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"dcr-n6w1lc\">Before the announcement, Sunak warned that for too long \u201cpolitical correctness has stopped us from weeding out vile criminals who prey on children and young women\u201d. He added: \u201cWe will stop at nothing to stamp out these dangerous gangs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>His claim is as wrong as Bravermans. As the Guardian also note:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An official report by the Home Office in 2020 concluded that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2020\/dec\/15\/child-sexual-abuse-gangs-white-men-home-office-report\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">most child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men<\/a>\u00a0under 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I believe the Home Office.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>What I do not believe is that there is any political correctness in evidence.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-68355\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/19DC48D6-3DCB-44D2-B328-02E5F07A5A50.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>This is the state of the UK in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/04\/03\/the-next-round-of-attack-from-the-fascists-has-been-opened-by-braverman-this-is-the-state-of-the-uk-in-2023\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,14,122,16,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-corruption","category-election","category-ethics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69048,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69045\/revisions\/69048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}