JazzG Oh Burns suddenly acknowledges there are migrant grooming gangs and not just brushing it off as racism and dog whistle, hell has frozen over.
I was implying you're not really being serious about either CSE or abortion.
The others have late terminations covered.
In the case of CSE many are no doubt thrilled about the new nationwide inquiry (a long term Tory bugbear). To me when a government holds a seven year, £180m inquiry and it results in demands for another inquiry rather than a Bill, it's a sign there's a tension in the electorate without legal resolution.
That tension is the huge enjoyment by a particular constituency of CSE as a racialised migrant issue, with its adjacency to Reform-style displacement of the UK's economic difficulties onto migrants.
The good news is the new inquiry is supposed to take "three months" (I'm sure this will be a year plus, but maybe not 7 years). At the end of it, what should we expect since we have a fair idea of the answers?
Firstly, that the largest cohort among group-based CSE offenders is white British. Secondly, that group-based CSE is mostly happening in family environments. Thirdly, that group-based CSE is a small proportion (< 10%) of CSA, which is thought to be very widespread: 500,000 cases a year, 3 million kids under 16 who've been abused are two estimates I've read. Fourthly, that there's no Bill fit to satisfy the vast political enjoyment of "migrant grooming gangs" that can be drafted. Fifthly, that the real work of system reform is expensive and difficult and no one in the political establishment has a great appetite for it.
Penultimately, the people demanding this inquiry will not read its recommendations just as they haven't read the recommendations of the Jay report.
Finally, if there's a racialised headline grab like Musk's made-up "250,000 victims" claim, it will become the only new fact for the constituency that enjoys having strong CSE feelings and demanding inquiries that aren't convertible into effective law or policy.
Between the feeble engagement of the state and the perpetual motion machine of Brexitism it's an unethical quagmire: evidently the objective is to continue foaming at the mouth about "migrant grooming gangs", with all that entails politically, while leaving services, law and policy to their decline.
