Jess Phillips has made clear what Labour cares about - she should hang head in shame

Labour has chosen votes over victims - and the cost is the soul of the nation. Labour's latest move to water down investigations into grooming gangs is nothing short of a grotesque betrayal of the victims and a cowardly surrender to identity politics. It is an unflinching demonstration of moral cowardice, political cynicism, and a total abandonment of the most vulnerable in our society - young, working-class, predominantly white British girls - who were systematically raped and trafficked while people in power looked away.

Let's not sugar-coat what's happening. Jess Phillips, the so-called "Safeguarding Minister," has effectively announced that Labour will leave it up to local councils to ask for funding to investigate the rape gangs. These councils are the very bodies about which difficult questions must now be asked. Instead we get a complete insult to every victim and a potential green light to anyone who covered these crimes up.

This betrayal didn't appear from nowhere. Labour has long had a problem confronting grooming gangs, especially when the perpetrators are predominantly British men with Pakistani heritage and the victims are not.

It's a politically inconvenient truth for Labour. Silence, deflection, and now, delegation are easier. So the buck is passed at the expense of properly investigating local authorities.

I find it impossible to believe that Labour is acting out of ignorance. This seems deliberate. This seems calculated. This seems to be the behaviour of a party that fears losing votes in heavily Muslim Labour strongholds - even if it means sacrificing the safety and dignity of young girls. The refusal to launch a national, statutory inquiry - with real power, real accountability, and no room for obfuscation - is not simply weakness.

It is a decision. It is policy. And what does this "policy" look like in action? It looks like the Government offering a vague £5million fund and leaving it to local councils - some of which are the very institutions alleged to have failed these girls for decades - to opt in if they feel like it.

Meanwhile, no one has ever been prosecuted for covering up this mass abuse. Not a single councillor, not a single police officer, not a single public official - despite mountains of evidence of failings within their institutions.

Take Rotherham. Over 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, were systematically abused over years. Jess Phillips and should hang their heads in shame. In what I can only assume is a race to appease one part of the electorate, they have discarded their duty to the entire country. This is not just a scandal - this is a betrayal of the British people, and a shameful perversion of justice.

But where Labour has failed, others are stepping up. is doing what the Government refuses to: leading the charge for a proper inquiry, with cross-party support and crowdfunding efforts that prove the public appetite for truth and justice is far from extinguished. If successful, this could mark the first real attempt to hold perpetrators and enablers to account.

The Labour Government has made its priorities abundantly clear - and the protection of vulnerable British girls does not feature among them. We cannot rebuild trust in our institutions while such evil is swept under the carpet. And we will never heal as a nation until justice is done.

If there is still a soul left in Britain, it must rise now. Not tomorrow. Not when it's politically convenient. Now. The time for silence is over.

Richard Thomson was the Reform candidate for Braintree in the 2024 General Election and served eight years as a Royal Marine Commando