Pressure is growing on Lucy Powell MP to resign, following her sneering dismissal of public anger over the ongoing Pakistani-majority rape gang scandal. During an appearance on the BBC’s Any Questions, commentator Tim Montgomerie asked Powell if she had seen the recent Channel 4 documentary on the rape gangs — a programme which highlighted the indifference of police and social services to these crimes, for fear of upsetting “community relations”.

Powell’s response was to snap: “Oh, so we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, let’s get that dogwhistle out.” Never mind the fact that working-class girls were subjected by these gangs to a degree and scale of sexual torture that, had it happened overseas in a conflict zone, would accord clear grounds for refugee status. All Powell seemed able to see was that it was a politically inconvenient narrative.

In this, she typified the institutional stance of the British governing class to the most appalling organised violence perpetrated in this country at least since the Second World War. The rape gangs have prompted waves of anger since the first revelations — only to be repeatedly downplayed. After Elon Musk drew America’s attention to the scandal at the start of the year and renewed calls for a national inquiry, Keir Starmer only responded with a grudging promise of resources and funding for locally-led inquiries.

Since then, Labour has been forced to defend against accusations that its watery response has weakened further. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips admitted last month that the commitment to five local inquiries has been transmuted into a “flexible” £5 million fund without judicial involvement, to be administered by the very same councils implicated in the cover-ups themselves, plus the creation of a new quango.

And no wonder. For what is the grievance, which Powell so contemptuously dismissed as a “dogwhistle”, actually about? It’s what Eric Kaufmann calls “asymmetric multiculturalism”, in which the ethnic majority is held to a different standard than minorities, especially on ethnic in-group preference. In the rape gangs, there is abundant evidence of the crimes’ racially aggravated nature. Yet this aspect has been methodically ignored, even as politicians such as Wes Streeting seem more worried about ethnic-majority anger over the crimes prompting retaliatory racial violence than about the rapists calling their child victims “white slag” as they beat them.

The injustice of this asymmetry, compounded by the scale, depravity, and ongoing nature of the gangs’ crimes, has created a political tinderbox. And yet for decades Britain’s leadership class has seemed unable to do anything except sit on the lid, and hope no one pries it open. Labour is particularly committed to this course of inaction, because asymmetric multiculturalism is a core Left-wing value. But there’s also a more pragmatic reason. In some urban constituencies, Labour has long relied for election on ethnic-minority voting blocs, notably Muslim ones, often coordinated by “community leaders” — in effect, pursuing power via tribal and religious political networks, with a thin British-style parliamentarian veneer.

Labour’s stance on Gaza damaged this previously comfortable quid pro quo, prompting the election of several “Gaza Independent” MPs, the launch of a “Muslim Vote” campaign group, and a significant drop in the Muslim share of Labour’s vote in many locations. The party must be nervous about further alienating an erstwhile key bloc of support: as former Equality and Human Rights Commission chairman Trevor Phillips recently noted, the offenders were “largely Pakistani Muslim in background, and also in Labour-held seats and councils”. No wonder that, with a margin of 700 votes in her previously safe and 45% Muslim seat, Jess Phillips is ignoring her remit of defending women and girls, and soft-pedalling an issue that might turn potential voters against her.

Powell has since made a (non)-apology on X. In keeping with his commitment to asymmetric multiculturalism, Streeting has demanded that Britons “move on”. But what if we don’t want to? Powell’s sneering dismissal of “that little trumpet” typifies the prejudices and political interests which perpetuate the cover-up, and contribute to a growing sense of politically-imposed injustice. It is this broader feeling which no doubt helped to spur Reform UK’s local election gains last week; it is unlikely to go away.

According to Tacitus, it was the punitive rape of Boudicca’s daughters that triggered the Iceni to rise up against the Romans, destroying the Ninth Legion and razing London. Britain these days is much more peaceful, and the usual aim is for change through the political process. We can only hope that those currently aspiring to govern Britain as a multiculturalist colony have the sense to allow the political process to function to this end. Ultimately, the way to avoid a repeat of 60 AD must be ending asymmetric multiculturalism. But Lucy Powell’s resignation as Leader of the Commons would be a good start.

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Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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