But Those Cops And Social Workers Are Still In A Job, Gaby

And that's the real issue. They shouldn't be. 

"Sophie" was 12 years old when she walked into Oldham police station to report a sexual assault. For a vulnerable child, first befriended and then viciously exploited by much older men, that must have taken courage. But officers simply told her to come back when she wasn’t drunk. It was a terrible missed opportunity, as an independent review of so-called grooming gang allegations in Oldham commissioned by the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham made clear in 2022. Sophie was picked up from the police station and driven to a house where she was raped by multiple men. Many years later, she learned that although a man eventually convicted of abusing her had given Greater Manchester police two other names, they had inexplicably failed to follow these leads.

Why is this - and the thousands of other instances where the authorities failed to do their job - not the main driver of the public's ire? Taxpayer money squandered on 'services' that failed miserably. 

There are thousands of Sophies out there, yet they are already slipping through the cracks of a debate that is supposedly about them: becoming pawns in an unedifying power struggle on the right of British politics, as the world’s richest man tests the limits of his influence over it.

At least he's keeping the pressure on, Gaby. I don't see anyone at the 'Guardian' stepping up to the plate.  

The BNP first tried to capitalise on rumours of Asian men exploiting white girls in Oldham a decade and a half ago, apparently distributing leaflets reading Our Children Are Not Halal Meat. Now Reform UK is demanding a new national inquiry into an already exhaustively examined scandal, the deportation of perpetrators with dual nationality – that many, not all, perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage is an awkwardly inescapable part of the story – and the jailing of anyone caught looking the other way, while Kemi Badenoch races to keep up and her rival Robert Jenrick races to outdo her.

Why is it 'awkward'? Usually, if crime is being committed by identifiable groups, that helps the police efforts, doesn't it? 

“I have a message for the legacy media,” announced the academic turned Reform cheerleader Prof Matt Goodwin. “If you’d been doing your job, we wouldn’t need Elon Musk.”

A message that should be resonating. But it isn't. 

My guess is Musk will lose this fight, because it’s Farage Reform members come to see: bounding onstage to denounce the “mass rape abomination” – his audience consider the phrase “grooming gangs” too soft – and accusing Starmer of failing to prosecute rapists, before arguing that the Conservatives were practically as bad.

The phrase IS too soft and yes, the Conservatives did fuck all for 13 years, but they are out and Labour are in! The buck stops where, Gaby? 

What may resonate, however, is the nagging sense that justice has still not entirely been done. With no police officer sacked or professional charged over arguably Britain’s worst child protection scandal, we are lacking a sense of catharsis.

So why aren't you using your pulpit to call for that, Gaby, instead of whining about Musk and Farage? 

Survivors need to know that in future such failure will have consequences, which is why Starmer is right to signal a new criminal offence of failing to report abuse, as recommended by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse set up under Theresa May.

What good will that do, when the people they were reporting it to covered it up and ignored it!  It's just yet more useless legislation!