‘Hundreds of people’ could deserve jail over grooming gangs cover-up, claim Tories – UK politics live
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, says there was deliberate action by some police, council leaders, social workers and prosecutors to hide abuseStarmer launches new grooming gangs investigationGood morning. All governments have to perform U-turns from time to time and over the weekend Keir Starmer had to stage another, announcing that he would order a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. Although Starmer can argue that he never firmly ruled out an inquiry, and that he is just responding to a recommendation from a short, evidence-based audit of “our understanding of the scale, nature and drivers” of grooming gang abuse conducted by Louise Casey, this is still embarrassing because it is an obvious victory for Kemi Badenoch, Reform UK and Elon Musk (probably the prime mover in this) who were aggressively lobbying for one in the new year. Badenoch is now saying Starmer should apologise for not agreeing with her more swiftly. As explained last week, when the opposition has to resort to demanding an apology, that is normally a sign of weakness, not strength, because it means it is running out of proper grievances to pursue. But this remains difficult territory for Labour. The No 10 press operation will be grateful that it has been quite low down the news agenda because of what is happening in the Middle East.Here is Aletha Adu’s overnight story. Continue reading...
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Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, says there was deliberate action by some police, council leaders, social workers and prosecutors to hide abuse
Good morning. All governments have to perform U-turns from time to time and over the weekend Keir Starmer had to stage another, announcing that he would order a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. Although Starmer can argue that he never firmly ruled out an inquiry, and that he is just responding to a recommendation from a short, evidence-based audit of “our understanding of the scale, nature and drivers” of grooming gang abuse conducted by Louise Casey, this is still embarrassing because it is an obvious victory for Kemi Badenoch, Reform UK and Elon Musk (probably the prime mover in this) who were aggressively lobbying for one in the new year. Badenoch is now saying Starmer should apologise for not agreeing with her more swiftly. As explained last week, when the opposition has to resort to demanding an apology, that is normally a sign of weakness, not strength, because it means it is running out of proper grievances to pursue. But this remains difficult territory for Labour. The No 10 press operation will be grateful that it has been quite low down the news agenda because of what is happening in the Middle East.
Here is Aletha Adu’s overnight story. Continue reading...
