Pandering to the far right: Chris Philp, Croydon’s only Conservative MP, appeared on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme yesterday
Croydon’s only Conservative MP, Chris Philp, has waded in to the race row fuelled by far-right extremists including Elon Musk, Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon over “grooming gangs”.
Ever the opportunist, Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, used the BBC’s Sunday morning politics programme to call for action on what he calls “rape gangs”. The Labour government has refused to hold a public inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse in Oldham, instead directing the council to do this itself.
Unfortunately for Philp, his criticisms only highlighted the failure by the Conservative government to make anything other than piecemeal responses to previous reports and inquiries.
Today, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, hit back at those who had criticised Jess Phillips, his minister for safeguarding and women. Musk had called Phillips an “evil witch” and a “rape genocide apologist”.
Starmer said: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible are not interested in victims.”
Decade as MP: Chris Philp is only now calling for an inquiry
And he might have had Croydon South MP Philp in mind when he said: “Once we lose the anchor that truth matters in the robust debate we must have, then we’re on a very slippery slope.
“And when politicians… who sat in government for many years, are casual about honesty, decency, truth and the rule of law, calling for inquiries because they want to jump on the bandwagon of the far right when that affects politics, because, a robust debate can only be based on the true facts.
“That’s why I want to call this out, because I think it really matters… It’s a sign of where the Tory party have got to that we’re even having this debate.”
There has been a series of scandals around widespread child abuse across several northern towns going back to the end of the last century. An estimated 1,400 children were sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly (but not exclusively) by British-Pakistani men. Similar outrages were committed in Huddersfield, Oldham and Rochdale. Numerous government inquiries were held and reports were published. But not much else.
Most recently, following an inspection of Rotherham Council by top civil servant, Louise Casey, she concluded that the council had a bullying, sexist culture of covering up information and silencing whistleblowers. As a result of fresh police inquiries, 19 men and two women were convicted in 2016 and 2017 of sexual offences dating back to the late 1980s. One of the ringleaders was jailed for 35 years. A former Labour councillor and life peer, Lord Nazir Ahmed, was jailed for five years for attempted rape of a girl and a serious sexual assault upon a boy.
The offences, and the often lame inquiries into them, occurred under Labour and Conservative governments.
In 2022, the Conservatives’ Amanda Solloway MP, a predecessor of Jess Phillips as safeguarding minister, decided not to hold a public inquiry into what happened in Oldham – exactly the same decision that hypocrite Philp was so animated about on television yesterday.
The Tories had previously rejected calls for inquiries, most famously in 2019 when Boris Johnson said, “I think an awful lot of money and an awful lot of police time now goes into these historic offences and all this malarkey… £60million I saw was being spaffed up a wall on some investigation into historic child abuse and all this kind of thing.”
In fact, there has been a series of inquiries and serious case reviews into child sexual abuse, all conducted under Conservative governments: Rochdale 2013; Home Affairs Secet Committee 2013; Rotherham 2014; Rotherham 2015; Greater Manchester 2020; Oldham 2022; Telford 2022; and Rochdale 2024.
And in June 2022, there was a 468-page independent report published into child sexual abuse, the result of seven years’ work led by Professor Alexis Jay. A year later, Prof Jay and the victims and survivors consultative panel said: “We are deeply disappointed that the Conservative government has not accepted the full package of recommendations made in the final report.
“In some instances, the government has stated that a number of them will be subject to consultations, despite the extensive research and evidence-taking which the inquiry carried out over seven years.”
Chris Philp has been an MP for almost 10 years now, and so was around Westminster when most of these inquiries and reports were being conducted and published. He was even a junior minister in the Home Office for some of that time, and served as policing minister for a period, too.
Yet a search of Philp’s social media timeline finds not a single mention of the issue of child sexual abuse before the latest, Musk-driven spat in the past week.
But there were some choice replies to his social media comments on Twitter yesterday.
Recognised for his hypocrisy: Shadow Home Secretary Philp and his Tory colleagues’ previous lack of action over child sexual abuse has been outed by the public
Philp’s colleague Robert Jenrick, now the Tories’ shadow spokesperson on justice, doubled down on situation, using it as the chance to attack migrants, migration, multiculturalism – and Muslims.
The Conservatives’ report into Islamophobia in the party, finally released in 2021, acknowledged anti-Muslim views among members, but denied that the party was institutionally racist. That pretence is blown now.
Yet instead of appealing for calm and reason, Philp chose to use a national broadcast interview to try to stir up further division and dispute, as the Conservatives sink ever lower in their existential battle with Reform.
None of this is without risk to Philp’s increasingly tattered reputation.
There are photos of him, out campaigning in Croydon for the Tories, standing shoulder to shoulder with someone who was himself arrested and investigated for historic child sexual abuse allegations.
There have been hints from the Metropolitan Police that the case might come to trial some time soon. Let’s hope so. Justice delayed is justice denied, as the Shadow Home Secretary would surely agree…
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Standing up for these vulnerable girls and women is not ‘far right’, it’s just right. Only now are we finding out about the coverups and appalling failures, if you disagree you are part of the problem.
No one said that the right, or far right, is standing up for the abused boys and girls. Because they are really not doing that at all.
And we are not only now finding out about the abuse, as you state, and as has been clearly laid out in this article.
Spreading lies and misinformation is the problem, and you are clearly are part of it.
Starmer didn’t help today by calling those who want a wider enquiry ‘far right’, He did the same thing last year with the Southport rioters. I don’t know about the best way to proceed, but I am certain that asking the councils at the centre of this to investigate themselves doesn’t look wise. It will hardly inspire confidence.
Except he never did that. Starmer called out Musk because he’s putting a target on Jess Phillips’ back.
Somehow you have managed to not read nor understand a word of the article.
The failure to investigate and prosecute goes back decades and shows an unwillingness to deal with the main group of systematic abusers, men of Pakistani origin, for fear of being labelled racist and causing tensions within the community. The Tories may well have failed to properly investigate but doesn’t absolve Starmer’s government of the need to do so. Why would a council that has allowed this abuse be allowed to investigate itself?
Please stop spreading that racist lie.
There has been extensive research in this area and it is clear that abusers are in all sectors of society and it isn’t true to claim that one group of people are the ‘main group’.
Here is a report on a study conduced in 2020 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/dec/analysis-new-home-office-report-admits-grooming-gangs-are-not-muslim-problem
He called out Musk thank god. But he also accused some MPs of jumping on a “far-Right bandwagon”.
Because they are pandering to the Far-Right.
The Tories had years & didn’t act but are now treating the victims as political weapons.
This isn’t hard to understand.
Starmer was right to call out Musk. But I was staggered to hear him also talk some authority’s misguided attempts to cover things up in the cause of community relations. First time he’s dealt with that unmentionable – respect is due.
It is not the first time. He did it when he was DPP
You’re just repeating the same things over and over.
Are you incapable of taking on board new information or do you just parrot something someone once said for all eternity?
How do you think so many are serving long sentences in prison if what you say is true?
You do know Starmer prosecuted the first of the ‘gangs’ back c.2012 himself, yes?
All forgotten just like the post office and contaminated blood issues and the persecution of the old.
How the hell is it forgotten?
What are you talking about?
Many of those gang members have been prosecuted and are serving long sentences. Why do you ppl keep pretending this nonsense?
The call for an inquiry has nothing to do with the issues. It is simply an attempt to smear Starmer with the accusation that he failed to take action at the time and it is being “covered up”.
This is demonstrably incorrect but Musk and his cronies are just hoping that the actual facts are irrelevant in this contrived debate and that they can build up enough momentum to force Starmer to resign. Pure cynical politics.
What I found the most disgusting about Philp’s interview yesterday was the way he kept on repeating the words “gang raped” over and over again, just saying those words like badly-written lines in a script, with no emotion or empathy; literally talking about these horrific crimes purely as a political argument tool.
Horrible little man.