https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/child-abuse-should-not-be-weaponised-racists-tories-or-elon-musk

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They [the UK Conservative Party or ‘Tories’] disregard the evidence of the inquiry they set up, which noted that child abuse was endemic in England and Wales (a separate inquiry is ongoing for Scotland); was enabled, covered up or ignored in multiple contexts from churches to schools, council-run care homes and when organised by criminal gangs; and is on the increase because of the rise in online pornography, grooming and pimping.

They ignore a report issued by the Home Office in 2020 when they were in power that concluded a majority of child sexual abuse gangs in Britain were made up of white men under 30.

They instead frame the question in racist terms. Shadow home secretary Chris Philps asks for an inquiry to ask why grooming gangs are “overwhelmingly of south Asian background.” Shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns calls on Phillips to release the “ethnicity data.”

They hype up a far-right trope about Asian, and specifically Muslim, grooming gangs that their own government reports disproved. Musk seizes on this too, retweeting claims Phillips is refusing to open an inquiry into “Muslim grooming gangs.”

Musk’s role is novel and dangerous. The richest man on Earth is incendiary, attacking Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and demanding that the King dissolve Parliament to protect children from the Labour government.

So far so Musk, but the Conservatives seem happy to take attack lines from the toxic tech tycoon and turn his transient fixations into British political weather.

Musk is soon to be a high-ranking member of the US government, which Keir Starmer is as ready to fawn on as his predecessors. Labour should stand up to this abuse or it will be humiliated, to the benefit — as Musk intends — of the British far right he openly supports.

That means rejecting the racist weaponisation of the issue.

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See the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/child-abuse-should-not-be-weaponised-racists-tories-or-elon-musk