In the Telegraph, Henry Hill savages Labour’s Lucy Powell for dismissing concerns about rape gangs as a “dog whistle”, arguing she’s just said out loud what a cowardly government quietly believes. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s when under pressure that people reveal what they think and who they truly are – and Labour’s Lucy Powell was clearly feeling the heat on the BBC’s Any Questions this week.
When journalist Tim Montgomerie (full disclosure: the founder of ConservativeHome, where I work) made a reasonable point about the dangers of allowing oversensitivity to community cohesion to trump things like child protection, as it had in places such as Rotherham, Powell said this:
“Oh, you want to blow that little trumpet now, do you? Let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we, yeah?”
Perhaps, like Sir Keir Starmer, she would have been more comfortable talking about Adolescence, the recent smash-hit fictional drama about a crime which, as seen in the show, has never taken place.
The Prime Minister spent weeks happily playing an unpaid role in Netflix’s publicity campaign, referring to the series as a “documentary” and calling for it to be shown in schools. Yet he refused to be interviewed for Channel 4’s actual documentary Groomed: A National Scandal, nor has he even confirmed he watched it.
Powell is not some random backbencher. As Leader of the House of Commons, she’s an important minister in this Labour Government.
But perhaps therefore her outburst should not surprise us, for Starmer’s ministers have given no impression so much as that they just wish the rape gangs scandal would go away.
Why else would they be fighting tooth and nail against calls for a proper national enquiry? Or more targeted investigations such as into specific allegations of collusions between the gangs and local police forces, as called for by Conservative MP Nick Timothy.
Worth reading in full.
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