That doesn’t imply the issue is resolved; Alexis Jay, the educational who headed up a nationwide inquiry into the abuse, has stated that few of the suggestions in her complete 2022 report have been carried out. However the disaster has been out within the open for a while, even when Elon Musk solely not too long ago determined to make it a trigger célèbre.
If you happen to’ve been on X in latest days, you might need the impression that there was some main new growth on this terrible story. Musk, the platform’s proprietor, has been posting about it incessantly, smearing Jess Phillips, the Labour minister overseeing problems with violence in opposition to ladies and women, as a “rape genocide apologist” and calling for her imprisonment. He’s additionally referred to as for the jailing of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and urged Britain’s king to dissolve Parliament and name new elections, one thing the monarch can not do.
Because the world’s richest man and a quasi-official member of Donald Trump’s group, Musk has monumental affect, and his admirers in each the US and Britain have taken up the trigger. Kemi Badenoch, head of the Tories, is demanding a brand new nationwide investigation, which her social gathering simply may have undertaken when it was in energy till final 12 months. Starmer, in flip, was compelled to handle Musk’s claims on Monday.
On this uproar, we’re seeing a very feral right-wing model of an old style Twitter mob, however with far increased stakes. Musk is utilizing a real atrocity to pursue his campaigns in opposition to each Starmer, with whom he has a long-running feud over the regulation of social media, and in opposition to mass immigration. The visceral horror of the underlying story — particularly to people who find themselves solely simply discovering it — offers his demagogic assaults a sheen of righteousness. However a lot of what’s he’s saying in regards to the present authorities’s culpability is both distorted or flatly unfaithful, a part of his more and more vigorous campaign in opposition to the world’s remaining liberal leaders.
The proximate reason for Musk’s ire is Phillips’s rejection of a request by the city of Oldham to open a nationwide inquiry into the historical past of grooming and little one sexual exploitation there. Phillips stated the investigation ought to be commissioned domestically, as these within the cities of Rotherham and Telford had been. I do not know whether or not this was the best determination, however it’s not a surprising one; as The Impartial reported, the earlier Tory authorities turned down Oldham’s request for a similar motive. However to Musk and his followers, it’s proof that Phillips, a lady with an extended feminist historical past, is engaged in a monstrous cover-up meant to guard Starmer, the nation’s director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
