Kemi Badenoch’s comment this morning calling for a full national inquiry into what she describes as the “rape gangs scandal” is clearly intended to claim moral leadership over an appalling stain on our recent national history.
But instead of seizing the political high ground she risks looking like she’s scrambling to catch up with Nigel Farage – and dancing to Elon Musk’s tune.
Mr Musk had spent all night posting inflammatory comments on X – suggesting that the Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips should go to prison after denying Oldham Council’s request for a government backed public inquiry in the issue. Ms Phillips had argued it would be better for an inquiry to be commissioned locally.
The billionaire American businessman went on to post in support of the Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe’s calls for an inquiry, as well as urging his followers “Vote Reform. It’s the only Hope.”
Since the last general election the Conservatives have been under huge and growing pressure from Mr Farage’s party, as highlighted by last week’s row over membership figures.
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But with this most sensitive of issues, Ms Badenoch looks perilously close to jumping on the Reform bandwagon.
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It’s a risky business – Mr Farage is determined not to be muscled out, and has hit back at the Tories’ failure to launch an inquiry during their 14 years in office: “Talk is Cheap.”
It’s a criticism also pointedly levelled at Ms Badenoch by Sammy Woodhouse, one of the survivors of sexual abuse in Rotherham, who posted that despite many meetings during the Conservatives’ years in power “none of you cared”.
Rather embarrassingly a letter to Oldham Council has emerged this afternoon written by the then Conservative minister of safeguarding, Amanda Solloway MP, back in 2022.
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In the letter – written in strikingly similar terms to her Labour successor’s – she rejects a previous request from the local authority for the government to set up a public inquiry. Instead, like Ms Phillips, she argued in favour of a locally commissioned inquiry.
This is precisely the position the shadow home secretary Chris Philp and current shadow safeguarding minister, Alicia Kearns, have criticised in a stinging public letter to the home secretary published today.
For the victims seeking a serious response, the political mudslinging is a degrading spectacle.
It’s all the more frustrating given the delay in implementing the recommendations of the public inquiry which has already examined some of these issues – the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Labour say they are working urgently to do so.
