What Lucy Powell’s grooming gang comments tell us about Labour

The government’s failure to launch a national inquiry into the mass sexual abuse of children will not be forgotten.

It should be a political no-brainer. The ‘grooming gangs’ scandal is as grotesque and shameful a blight on any country’s legacy as could be envisaged. The government should be eager to instigate an immediate inquiry into what went wrong. Any delay would surely be unfathomable. And yet here we are.

The report by Professor Alexis Jay in 2022 confirmed the extent of the rape and torture of young girls – more than 1,400 victims, and doubtless many more yet to be discovered – and that the fear of being branded as ‘racist’ had prevented those in authority from acting sooner. The Labour party apparently wants us to forget all about it and move on. Worse still, it seems intent on repeating the same mistake that the report highlighted, by throwing around accusations of racism against those who raise concerns.

This attitude seemed to be encapsulated during an exchange between writer Tim Montgomerie and leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell on the last edition of Any Questions on BBC Radio 4. Montgomerie had asked Powell if she had seen the programme on Channel 4 about the abuse in the north of England, to which Powell replied: ‘Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, okay, let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we? Yeah’.

I have written previously about the notion of ‘dog-whistles’, and how the phrase is a rhetorical tool to make sinister insinuations on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. It is a form of amateur telepathy, a means to accuse someone of secretly thinking something that they never said. It’s the kind of strategy that sixth form debating clubs quickly learn to avoid, and certainly shouldn’t be used by elected politicians if they hope to keep their self-respect intact.

It is also, of course, a neat trick to avoid finding yourself drawn into difficult conversations. It’s reminiscent of the debate in the House of Lords last November when Jacqui Smith – now the Rt Hon the Baroness Smith of Malvern and the government spokesperson for equalities – was asked whether the government had a working definition of ‘gender identity’. The honest answer would have been: ‘No, because nobody knows what it means’. Instead, she accused her challenger of attempting to ‘catch her political opponents out’. Given that so much public policy has been formulated on the basis of this mystical notion of ‘gender identity’, the question of whether the government can define it is surely relevant.

Others have claimed that the question ‘what is a woman?’ is a ‘transphobic dog-whistle’. In the tribunal of nurse Sandie Peggie, the male doctor who had insisted on sharing her changing facilities even described the phrase ‘biological sex’ as a ‘nebulous dog whistle’. But this is no less ridiculous than the claim that discussions about the mass rape of children is a frivolous tune to be blown on a political ‘trumpet’.

Powell’s remarks would be easier to dismiss as a slip of the tongue were it not for the fact that they are entirely in keeping with the overtures we’ve been hearing from the government for quite some time. Is there any real difference between Powell’s accusation of ‘dog whistling’ and Keir Starmer’s view, expressed at a press conference in January, that politicians demanding a full-scale inquiry were jumping ‘on a bandwagon of the far right’?

Does Powell deserve the benefit of the doubt? While it is true that any of us can misspeak, I am not convinced that this remark should simply be brushed off as a gauche moment in the heat of a debate. After all, she had been invited to participate in a BBC political discussion programme; it’s not as though she was blindsided by an over-zealous reporter doorstepping her for a scoop. Panellists on Any Questions know that they must choose their words with care. Elected politicians are hardly infallible, but they should be subjected to scrutiny when they make such flippant remarks in such a forum. This is particularly the case when the remarks pertain to a national scandal that the government has continually failed to tackle.

Last week, Labour minister Jess Phillips insisted that there would be more than the promised five local inquiries into grooming gangs, but of course this is inadequate. As Kemi Badenoch pointed out, ‘local authorities don't want to investigate themselves’. It seems obvious that a national inquiry is the only satisfactory option for such an egregious and horrific failure of authority. We already know of countless examples of police, social workers and journalists failing in their basic duties on this issue. There has to be a reckoning.

A few principled writers - most notably Julie Bindel - persisted in reporting on these cases in the early days, but most others were cowed into silence. When Labour MP Sarah Champion raised the alarm in parliament, she was forced out of the shadow cabinet. Given the likelihood that further failures by those in power will be uncovered in the event of an inquiry, it is hardly surprising that the government is, as Badenoch puts it, ‘dragging its heels’. Starmer is clearly more interested in sustaining the myth that multiculturalism has been a triumph rather than grappling with the grim reality.

I do not for one moment believe that Powell does not care about the sexual abuse of minors, or that her words should be taken to signify anything malevolent. Rather, they would seem to be an extension of Labour’s entire strategy on this issue. That is: to make unsavoury accusations as a method of distraction, and to undermine the integrity of those asking awkward questions in the hope that they will simply go away. But such accusations were precisely the reason why these grooming gangs were able to continue abusing their victims with impunity in the first place. One would have thought that this lesson would not be difficult to learn.

Irrespective of Powell’s motives, it is political ineptitude of the highest order for the government not to call for an immediate national inquiry. If there are any sound justifications for neglecting to do so, Labour has not yet successfully articulated them. For a failing government, this should be an obvious course of action, one that would be both morally right and politically expedient. The inaction would be contemptible enough, but accusing those who want to see some kind of accountability as being ‘racist’ or ‘far right’ is unlikely to be forgiven.

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