By GB News (World News) | Created at 2025-01-26 06:06:08 | Updated at 2025-01-27 04:07:10
22 hours ago
Whether you agree with him or not, what President Trump’s first few days back in the Oval Office has shown is that governments who want to do things can do them, if the determination is there.
Too often in Britain, there are always excuses for why we can’t change things. We’re told we couldn’t leave the EU, we can’t leave the ECHR, we can’t reduce immigration, usually followed up by a vague excuse about stakeholders, international law, or some committee or other.
A willing UK Government would have widespread public support for calling a national inquiry into grooming gangs. But we have been given the standard sort of excuses.
We were told by Labour that calling for one was a ‘political stunt’ and a ‘bandwagon’. We were told that a few years ago, the Jay review looked into all of this (even though the Jay review only looked at a handful of towns in Britain).
Unlike Trump, who has delivered huge change through a stroke of his black and gold Sharpie pen, the establishment in Britain closes ranks yet again, telling us that clear solutions to obvious problems are overly simplistic.
Facing massive political pressure, the UK Government has now reluctantly agreed to another handful-of-towns style of inquiry, which is a total cop-out and will not give us a true picture of the extent of grooming gangs’ activities in the UK.
In the Welsh Parliament we see the same playbook in action. When my colleague Darren Millar asked the Welsh First Minister about grooming gangs, and began outlining a victim’s harrowing story, the Senedd’s Presiding Officer (the Senedd’s equivalent of the Speaker of the House of Commons) shut him down.
Darren was told he was being “overly descriptive”, that he should “tone down the rhetoric” and avoid “inflaming discrimination”. As the Jay review found, there's a constant fear of upsetting the apple cart that allowed grooming gangs to continue their activities relatively undisturbed.
WATCH: Fiery clash in Welsh parliament over grooming gangs that led to 'censorship' accusations
During the same session, I asked the First Minister about what discussions she’d had with the UK Government about grooming gangs.
Astonishingly, my question was met by groans from Members from other parties across the Senedd’s debating floor, and audible moans of “dear, dear”.
Seeing that the Labour UK Government is unwilling to do the right thing, take action, and call a UK-wide national inquiry, the Welsh Conservatives have called for the Labour Welsh Government to call a Wales-wide inquiry.
Labour Ministers in Cardiff Bay have refused. Again, despite widespread public support, the establishment closes ranks and denies victims the answers they deserve.
The Welsh Government has said it doesn’t believe there are any “current widespread issues with grooming gangs” in Wales, and that “you can never say this will not be happening somewhere”.
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These weak reassurances are not enough. The threshold for taking action against grooming gangs should not be when it becomes “widespread”, and we should not accept some small level of this activity as part of life in modern Britain.
We should seek it out and stamp it out. An inquiry is the first step towards that aim.
Victims deserve an inquiry. The British establishment, which allowed these atrocities to go on for too long out of cultural convenience or because people were frightened of being called racist, owes it to the victims to find answers and expose truths.
It seems the only people who don’t want to hold a proper inquiry are those politicians with the power to call one. The question we’re all left asking is: Why is that?
