What we can now see, though, with this morning’s front pages, is that this is the next front opened up by the Tories in their attempt to turn politics into a never-ending culture war. We had “Stop The Boats”, which signally failed to sway the opinion polls in their direction, and so, in yet another attempt to shore up the so-called “Red Wall” seats they captured in 2019, has come more Muslim bashing intended to get voters in line behind The Blue Team.
As the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press knows no bounds in its desperation to get the Tories re-elected in the General Election that will most likely come next year, no-one should be surprised that the Murdoch Times, the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, and the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, have splashed on the story this morning.
Go and stand at the back of the class, Express idiots: “Woke” does not mean “Politically Correct”. Which is what the paper is claiming, because above that headline it tells “PM pledges ‘political correctness’ will not stop pursuit of grooming gangs”. But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with this approach - it was bollocks.
Worse, the Government knew that three years ago. As the Guardian reported at the time. “The majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30, an official paper has said. The report, which covers England, Scotland and Wales and summarises a range of studies on the issue of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE), also known as grooming gangs, said there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders”.
“The review was published after criticism that victims of child abuse had been failed because of fear of accusations of racism”. Exactly the line pushed by Sunak and Ms Braverman. So how did those involved in prosecutions react?
“Nazir Afzal, the former chief crown prosecutor in the north-west, who brought prosecutions over the Rochdale grooming gangs, welcomed the report. ‘It confirms that white men remain the most common offenders, which is something rarely mentioned by rightwing commentators,’ he said. ‘However, it is not shy in reflecting that south Asian and British Pakistani men are disproportionately found in high-profile cases’”. Do go on.
Focusing entirely on the ethnicity of the offenders. And thereby missing the bigger picture. So most likely failing the victims. Because this is not about those victims. It is about a party looking electoral oblivion in the face and doing anything it can to line up voters behind its record of ineptitude as a means of holding on to power. They failed - and it’s someone else’s fault.
The Tories are a principle-free shower. But you knew that already.
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Aside from anything else, the cognitive dissonance on display here is quite something. Given we’ve literally just had a report into the Met police highlighting in vivid detail how many of their officers were not backward at coming forward in their “not really very politically correct” racism against fellow officers, we’re now expected to believe these same police officers are being held back by “politically correctness” when it comes to interrogating people of Asian origin.
ReplyDeleteBroadcast and press media just doing their job, Tim. Which is to support a continuing return to "Victorian values". You know, child labour, inflicted poverty, racism, xenophobia, imperial wars, genocides, slum landlords.... that sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteIt's what cowards do. There'll always be someone to take their shilling.......Huw Edwards at the BBC for instance. On a cool £500,000 a year for doing fuck all except read off a prompter.... words by some standard BBC far right tory or other.
Yaxley-Lennon himself said that the polis weren't allowed to arrest Muslims because Political Correctness Gone Mad, before going on to claim that if he was jailed he’d be killed utterly to DETH by Jihadi gangs once in the slammer.
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