It’s a political maxim that if you’re going to be forced into a particular decision anyway, you may as well decide to do it yourself first. It’s a lesson Keir Starmer could do with learning.
We got confirmation from the Home Secretary on Monday afternoon of news briefed over the weekend: the government is launching a public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, on the recommendation of Dame Louise Casey and her “rapid audit”. I covered the statement yesterday, while Megan Kenyon has an excellent analysis of what the report found.
Addressing the Commons, Yvette Cooper told MPs Casey’s report revealed “a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children”, condemning the “collective failure” to address questions about ethnicity and announcing a number of government measures, including new laws, new mandatory reporting rules, new support for victims and new data collection. Her reference to “cultural and social drivers for this sort of offending” is striking, given the past reluctance from both main parties to address the issue of ethnicity in this area, as was her announcement that people convicted of grooming or sexually abusing children will be denied the right to claim asylum.
But for all that, it is the national public inquiry that is the focus.
The U-turn means the government is now in the position it seemed to want to avoid in January, when the issue of a scandal that took place over a decade ago shot back to the top of the political agenda, in no small part thanks to the attention of Elon Musk. Back then, Starmer claimed those calling for a national inquiry on the subject were “jumping on a bandwagon” and “amplifying what the far right is saying”.
This reference was intended to address the conspiracy theories zooming around in the darker corners of the internet that Labour figures like Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had deliberately covered up abuse scandals for personal gain. But taken out of context, it seemed to imply the Prime Minister thought anyone outraged or concerned about this historic episode of unfathomable state failure had ulterior motives.
The government have had valid reasons to resist calls for a national inquiry. Alexis Jay, who compiled a 467-page report into child sexual abuse published in 2022, opposed one, on the grounds that it would delay the implementation of the recommendations she had already made. So did other experts, including, initially, Casey herself. It is understood that it was in part her conversations with victims that changed her mind, who have for years continued to be failed by the authorities – although it should be noted that there are thousands of victims, and they do not all speak with one voice.
There were reasons, too, for pointing out that some of those calling the loudest for a national inquiry – such as Kemi Badenoch and her shadow home secretary, Chris Philp – hadn’t seemed to care about the issue until Musk highlighted it. Badenoch, who was physically shaking with righteous indignation when she responded to Cooper in the Chamber on Monday, had not met or made plans to meet any of the victims when she made her demand for an inquiry in January, nor showed much interest in the topic when she was women’s and equalities minister. Philp – as Jess Phillips pointed out in an explosive Commons performance in April – had not held a single meeting on the subject in his two years a minister for crime, policing and fire.
But the rush to shut down dissenters made the government seem like it was out of touch with the horror the public was feeling – albeit for a scandal that had not come as news to many in parliament, most notably the Prime Minister.
“We are fooling ourselves if we think this child abuse scandal is all about individual failings and that the dispatch of key individuals is a sufficient response. The patterns of sexual abuse and exploitation described in the report are not new… Nor are the inadequate responses.”
These were Starmer’s words, in response not to Casey’s report this week but to Jay’s in August 2014 into the Rotherham gangs. When he wrote them, he had just spent five years as director of public prosecutions, focusing (among other things) on changing the culture at the Crown Prosecution Service so more rape gang cases could come to court. The 2014 Starmer wasn’t even an MP yet, and his writing is that of a lawyer, not a politician. But it is evident in his condemnation of how victims were ignored and calls for a mandatory reporting scheme for child sexual violence that he both understood the scale of the scandal and was outraged about it.
Perhaps this explains the more recent reluctance on the Prime Minister’s part to reopen a subject that had hardly been swept under the rug, at the urging of people who (he might justifiably argue) simply hadn’t been paying attention. But politics doesn’t respond to such detached logic. Given the strength of feeling as gruesome details that were in the public domain but not common knowledge became front-page news once more, a national inquiry was virtually inevitable. A Prime Minister in touch with public anger should have realised that.
Starmer should have realised, too, that hesitating would fuel the very worst conspiracies that he and his team have something to cover up and that a prolonged delay and sharp U-turn would cause extra damage. (After last summer’s Southport riots, he might have wanted to consider too that it would be better to announce an inquiry in January, when the sun sets at 4pm, than during the long, hot evenings of June.) The delay has damaged the government’s credibility on an issue Starmer and others in his team actually have a very strong record tackling. Almost a year into the job, it’s a political lesson the Prime Minister ought to have learned.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Abortion’s unwelcome return to British politics]
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