The Government has repeatedly brushed aside calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs. About 15 years ago, similarly dismissive police officers in Rotherham waved away a youth worker’s concerns about child exploitation. She was allegedly told: “Stop rocking the multi-cultural boat.”
NGOs play an important role in campaigning and holding political authorities to account, but this ought not render them above criticism, or, when they actively promote violence and terrorism, legal recourse.
Whatever guidelines there may be on engagement with organisations, no-one will take them seriously if the Government doesn’t do so itself.
Government dialogue with an organisation doesn’t mean Ministers rewarding it. Rather, it means engaging with it.
A handful of ordinary members may let the rest of us down, but I have seen no sign that our Party systemically encourages anti-Muslim hatred.
Nor should we indulge the murderer’s view of himself as being motivated by ideology. He was evil, and his final act was to spit in the face of God.
The state is indirectly attacking an individual who has received death threats rather than take action against those threatening him.
We need to find advocates whose authority and Islamic orthodoxy the extremists respect. Such people exist, but they are not liberal Imams or nominally Christian politicians.
None of the bodies I served on would ever dream of having a governor who held neo-Nazi views. We should be just as intolerant in this context.
We need action. And we need ministers who understand how to exercise power. They need to use that power to take decisions and make sure they are implemented.