Sunk needs to get his fact right ... Starmer on LBC phone-in

[SydneyRover]

Starmer says 'vast majority' of sexual abuse cases do not involve ethnic minorities
Keir Starmer is starting his LBC phone-in. He is broadcasting from Hartlepool.

Nick Ferrari, the presenter, starts by asking about the Rishi Sunak announcement about grooming gangs.

Starmer says, on child exploitation, we should do anything possible.

He says, as DPP, he gave the green light to prosecute the Rochdale case. That involved Pakistani men, he points out.

On mandatory reporting, he says he called for that 10 years ago.

That is “a decade lost”, he says.

That is 10 years ago and this government has been in power now for 13 years. That is a decade lost and I think the prime minister and others have to really explain why they have wasted that decade.

On ethnicity, he says “the vast majority” of sexual abuse cases do not involve ethnic minorities.

It is right that ethnicity should not be a bar, and political correctness should not get in the way of prosecutions. But the vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involved those of ethnic minorities and so I am all for clamping down on any kind of case, but if we are going to be serious we have to be honest about what the overlook is.

And he says it was really instructive for him, when his team asked him for permission to prosecute the Rochdale cases, one of the men they were prosecuting had been arrested but not charged some years before.

He asked why. And what he found was that good faith police officers, and good faith prosecutors, had made assumptions about the young girl victims. Because they had not reported the abuse early, and because they had gone back to the perpetrators, and because they had been drinking, it was assumed they would not be believed.

He says he insisted on a change in approach.

[Ldr]

He’s not wrong

[SydneyRover]

Ldr I should have added, as everyone is aware that this topic has been well discussed as part of other threads and probably doesn't need reviving it's just a lousy way in my view to go after votes.

[Ldr]

And with that Syd, you’re not wrong either

[BillyStubbsTears]

It's a disgusting way to go about getting votes.

But that's Braverman.

She is a truly frightening politician. She wants to keep poking angry people to make sure they stay angry. It's what the far right (and she IS, very, far right) have always done. It's the job of the rest of us to make sure the likes of her never succeed.