Sir Keir Starmer was never keen on an inquiry specifically on Pakistani grooming gangs. The prime minister wants to be protective of the wider Pakistani community in the UK. The last thing he wants is an Islamophobic report which states that for cultural and religious reasons, Muslim Pakistan men have been targeting vulnerable white children and young women. But this is precisely the conclusion that some of the survivors and other groups want.
The Labour leadership was already in trouble with some Pakistani voters who felt it was not sufficiently critical of Israel’s military approach in the Gaza war. Starmer would not want to alienate them further with a report that picks out only Pakistanis when it comes to sexual abuse. It would be preferable to have a report that acknowledges that while there has been an historic problem with Pakistani grooming gangs in places such as Rotherham and Rochdale, white men are involved, too, in bigger numbers across the UK as a whole.
This presents a tricky dilemma for the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who was born in Britain of parents who came from Mirpur. She has to say there won’t be a cover up while at the same time being protective of the Pakistani and Muslim population as a whole. Politicians like Nigel Farage will want to use the report to emphasise some Muslim immigrants are the problem. Robert Jenrick, the Tory shadow justice secretary, won’t be helpful either.
Survivors have reacted badly to a letter asking them whether the inquiry should “take a broader approach”. Some are refusing to serve on an advisory panel unless the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips steps down. It may be months before someone acceptable to all is found to chair the inquiry, which will take at least three years. It may not even report before the general election.
It is now impossible to avoid an inquiry but the politics of grooming gangs is proving very damaging to race relations. It is doubly troubling that the white children and young women were vulnerable because they were abandoned by their own families, leaving them – in the words of former home secretary Jack Straw – “easy meat” for their Jeffrey Epstein-like predators.
End is nigh
Indians as a people link their state of mental well being to a remarkable degree to the performance of their cricketing stars. Few people have been more crucial in boosting the national morale than Virat Kohli. But the end is nigh after he scored consecutive ducks in the current ODI series against Australia.
Kohli was dismissed for two consecutive ducks against Australia before scoring a fifty in the third ODI. (Photo: Getty Images)
He has already stepped down from Tests and T20s. But now everyone expects him to say a final farewell to the game he has dominated since he first captained India to victory in the U-19 world cup in 2008. At 36, he is now a family man, who likes living mostly in London, the capital of Greater India, with his wife, Anoushka, and their two children, Vamika and Akaay.
By change is inevitable, indeed desirable, as Tennyson put it so memorably in his poem, Morte d’Arthur: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,/ And God fulfils Himself in many ways,/ Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
The King’s Papal mission
King Charles went to the Vatican and prayed jointly in the Sistine Chapel with Pope Leo XIV, the first time in 500 years that the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the head of the Catholic Church have engaged in such a gesture of religious unity.
It was “the moment that made ecclesiastical history”, observers noted.
This is something that Charles couldn’t do while his mother was alive. The late Queen was much more rigid in maintaining a separation between the Protestant and Catholics faiths.
Getty Images
I was with Charles and Diana, the then Prince and Princess of Wales, during their royal tour of Italy in 1985. It was announced that during their visit to the Vatican, Charles would celebrate mass jointly with Pope John Paul II. The Queen wasn’t pleased and quickly put a stop to any such foolishness, as she saw it, on her son’s part.
Vic Chapman, who was the accompanying Buckingham Palace press officer, summed up Charles’s reaction to being pulled up sharply by the Queen in characteristically eloquent language: “It sure ****** up his lunch.”
Charles has had to wait 40 years to achieve one of his great ambitions. He has not so far formally changed one of his job specifications – “Defender of the Faith”. But he has long made it clear his wishes to be “defender of faith”, meaning he wants to be equally protective of Hinduism, Islam and other religions in the UK. In P G Wodehouse parlance, that makes him rather a good egg.
This is confirmed by comments from ultra orthodox folk in the CoE such as: “Is King Charles III a ‘real’ Christian?”
Flogging the Prince Andrew story
Coverage of the Prince Andrew story has been extensive, not so much because of moral outrage – after all, very little that is really new has emerged – but because newspapers are convinced that “Randy Andy”/ “Air Miles Andy” helps to boost circulation. It has taken the heat off Meghan, still the Duchess of Sussex, for the time being. But continued coverage of Prince Andrew is a bit like flogging a dead parrot.
Who are the other people who were close to Jeffrey Epstein and the well known men to whom the underage Virginia Roberts was trafficked? Clearly, there was a grooming gang working for Epstein and his partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, which made their Pakistani counterparts in Yorkshire appear like rank amateurs.
The abusers are not identified in Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumously published book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.
Getty Images
Virginia’s ghostwriter, Amy Wallace, has said she knows all the names, which are in the Epstein files held by the FBI. But since both Epstein and Virginia have died by suicide, it is likely the identities of the other abusers will never be revealed. Virginia chose not to name them apparently because she feared for her own safety and that of her family.
That explains why Prince Andrew is the only one who has been taken to task. And whatever people say, his record does not undermine either the monarchy or the high regard in which King Charles is held.
Whether Andrew lives in the 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor or retains his “Duke of York” title, is ultimately not all that important. What I would take into account is that his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, with whom Andrew shares his home, has been receiving treatment for cancer, in common with Prince William’s father and wife. Whatever her financial links with Epstein, there should also be some room for compassion.
Hamas tactics
Soon after the Gaza ceasefire, chilling footage emerged of Hamas fighters dragging seven men with hands tied behind their backs into a square, forcing them to kneel and executing them in cold blood as dozens of onlookers watched from nearby storefronts. Some captured the murders on their mobile phones.
This one incident should make people pause before considering Hamas to be freedom fighters. Both sides have been brutalised by the conflict that has been raging since the creation of Israel in 1948. What’s not clear is why Hamas launched the attack on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, when it knew Israel’s revenge would be overwhelming. But in trying to eliminate Hamas, Israel has carried out a genocide, killing 70,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Getty Images
However difficult, Israel should have found a way of dealing with Hamas but without carrying out the genocide – which has planted the seeds of future Palestinian retaliation. One lesson to be drawn from the execution video is that Hamas do need to be disarmed and disbanded. But a wider lesson from the Middle East is that 78 years after partition, India and Pakistan need to resolve their differences.
Sari Dawn in Commons
The Labour MP Dawn Butler should be complimented for wearing a sari in the Commons to mark Diwali. I have a picture of her wearing a black and silver sari in 2019. Someone should gift Dawn a dozen saris, from silk to chiffon and cotton.
The sari is so elegant it should be part of every woman’s wardrobe. Meghan Markle and Theresa May wore saris during trips to India in 2019. I wish the late Queen had led the way by putting on a sari.
My eldest and youngest sisters, who live in Toronto and Kolkata respectively, wear saris all the time. The irony is that during my last trip to India, I found young women in cities dress more or less like their counterparts in the west. The sari is reserved for Diwali, Puja, weddings and formal functions.
