Dominic Cummings may have just blown the grooming gangs scandal wide open
All progressives solemnly honour LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. And Islamophobia Awareness Month. And Black History Month. Plus many other such events. This is because they're passionately committed to 'raising awareness' of social injustice.
So why not the grooming gangs scandal?
For some reason, this is one example of social injustice which has failed to grip progressives' attention. To rectify this, I suggest we introduce Grooming Gangs Awareness Month. Fly an official Grooming Gangs Scandal flag from all public buildings. Get civil servants to wear Grooming Gangs Scandal lanyards. Then perhaps these people might finally take an interest.
Then again, we may be wasting our time. In all likelihood, progressives have never lacked 'awareness' of the grooming gangs. They just didn't want anyone else to be aware of them.
Which brings me to the explosive allegations made on Thursday by Dominic Cummings. In an interview with GB News, he claimed that, when he was working at the Department of Education in the early 2010s, there were 'mass cover-ups of the whole thing in Whitehall'.
Are Mr Cummings's allegations true? I don't know. But then, that's why we need the full national inquiry that Labour continues to deny us. A handful of mere 'local inquiries' won't do – not least because it wouldn't be within their scope to investigate Mr Cummings's claims about what went on in Whitehall.
Yesterday, incidentally, seven members of yet another grooming gang were found guilty of raping two teenage girls in Rochdale. Labour may not like Mr Cummings. But this time I think it should listen to him. And, for that matter, to the increasingly furious public.
Personally, I was somewhat taken aback when, on Tuesday, the new chairman of Nigel Farage's Reform UK told voters that 'immigration is the lifeblood of this country, and it always has been'. I was even more surprised when, on Wednesday, he told Richard Madeley on ITV's Good Morning Britain that he was once strangled by an evil spirit masquerading as the ghost of his late grandmother.
To my mind, though, Dr David Bull's most intriguing comment of the week was this. Asked whether he supports calls to ban the burqa in this country, he replied: 'I'm very anxious about the rise in people that think it is OK to hide their faces. We had a conversation yesterday about whether that was the burqa, crash helmets, scarves or whatever.'
Hang on. Crash helmets?
I for one have always admired Reform's bracingly no-nonsense attitude towards health-and-safety-gone-mad. But a ban on crash helmets, I feel, might be taking it a touch too far.
In any case, I'm not convinced that there's a huge public clamour for such a ban. There are plenty of people who want to ban the burqa, and they have strong arguments for doing so. But I've never heard a voter say: 'I'm sorry, but I'm sick of seeing all these women walking around the streets in crash helmets. It's not as if it's their choice, either. Their husbands force them to do it. The crash helmet is a disgusting symbol of misogyny and patriarchal oppression.
'Also, crash helmets make normal human interaction impossible. When a motorcyclist zooms past me at 70mph, I expect to be able to see his face.
'Anyway, it's just not British. If motorcyclists want to wear crash helmets, they can go and do it in their own country.'
Remarks like those, I would guess, aren't heard all that often in focus groups. So why Dr Bull raised the idea, entirely unprompted, in reply to a question about banning the burqa, I don't know.
Still, I'm not complaining. Far from it. When I stepped down as this newspaper's parliamentary sketch writer in 2021, after 10 years, I felt that politics was in danger of becoming dull. The previous decade had teemed with the most glorious eccentrics, on Left and Right alike. Increasingly, however, they seemed to be fading from view, to be replaced by robotic regiments of Starmers and Sunaks.
How wonderful it is to see a new generation coming through.
I don't know whether you ever read Left-wing news outlets. But if you do, this week you'll probably have noticed something peculiar.
In such outlets, the violence in Ballymena is always described as 'rioting' – yet the violence in LA is always described as 'protests'.
You may well have wondered why this is. After all, both Ballymena and LA have seen cars set on fire, missiles thrown, and police officers injured. These are all very bad things. So why don't Left-wing news outlets refer to both as 'rioting'?
The answer is simple. The violence in Ballymena is being perpetrated by people who are against mass immigration. The violence in LA, in contrast, is being perpetrated by people who are in favour not only of mass immigration, but of 'irregular' (i.e., illegal) immigration. And, just as importantly, they hate Donald Trump. Therefore, their actions must be made to sound understandable and legitimate.
In other words: sometimes setting people's cars on fire is nasty and frightening. And sometimes it's noble and compassionate. Please update your records accordingly.
'Way of the World' is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday
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