Yesterday, on the final day before Parliament broke for Easter recess, the Labour government delivered a devastating blow to victims of the grooming gang scandal. In a move that can only be described as a cowardly capitulation, the ironically titled Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips announced the cancellation of five already inadequate local inquiries into the horrific abuse that has scarred towns across Britain. This decision, slipped out with just 45 minutes’ notice before the recess, reeks of a deliberate attempt to bury the truth and shield those complicit in one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s recent history.

The betrayal is staggering. In January, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had pledged a paltry £5 million to fund inquiries into grooming gangs in just five towns blighted by this abuse scandal—a gesture that was already a woefully insufficient response to a crisis that has devastated thousands of lives across the country. These investigations, limited in scope and lacking the teeth of a national inquiry, were supposed to at least begin to expose the systemic failures that allowed vulnerable girls to be sexually tortured by gangs of men over decades. But even that feeble promise has now been scrapped, leaving victims with nothing but broken trust and a government that seems determined to let the guilty walk free.

Instead, the £5 million has been reallocated into a vague “flexible fund” for “locally-led work,” a move that survivors and critics have rightly slammed as a whitewash. The Home Office claims this isn’t a U-turn, with a spokesperson insisting the funds will still support local authorities who wish to launch their own inquiries. But here’s the rub: the very local authorities now tasked with investigating are the ones who were supposed to be under scrutiny in the first place.

This is nothing short of a scandal within a scandal. For years, local councils, police forces, and social services in towns like Rotherham, Oldham, and Bradford have been accused of turning a blind eye to the grooming gang crisis. Reports have detailed how officials ignored victims’ cries for help, fearing accusations of racism or disruption to so-called “community cohesion.” In some cases, councillors and police officers have been directly implicated in cover-ups, with survivors like Samantha Walker-Roberts of Oldham warning that local inquiries led by these same councils will never hold the guilty to account.

A judge in Kirklees even noted that one offender was seen with his victim by police on at least three occasions, yet nothing was done. Now, Labour has handed these same authorities the power to investigate themselves—a decision that mocks the very concept of justice. As Tory MP Katie Lam pointedly asked in the Commons, how, without a national inquiry, can we understand what part these factors played?

This betrayal is not just a failure of policy; it’s a failure of morality, rooted in the liberal ideology that has long dominated Labour’s thinking. For decades, the party has clung to the myth of multiculturalism, prioritising “community cohesion” over the safety of Britain’s most vulnerable. The grooming gang scandal lays bare the catastrophic consequences of this dogma. Thousands of children have been sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism, with authorities more concerned about avoiding cultural tensions than protecting young girls from rape and exploitation. This is not stopping anytime soon.

Dr. Taj Hargey of the Oxford Institute for British Islam has accused Labour of refusing a national inquiry to secure the Muslim-bloc vote, a damning indictment of a party that seems more interested in political expediency than confronting uncomfortable truths.

The decision to cancel these inquiries also exposes the hollowness of Labour’s supposed commitment to victims. Survivors have fought for years to have their voices heard, only to be let down time and again by a state that failed them. Some have suggested that Keir Starmer’s refusal to back a fully independent inquiry stems from a fear that Labour politicians themselves could be implicated in the cover-up. Whether or not that’s true, the optics are damning: a government that claims to champion safeguarding has instead chosen to protect the very institutions that enabled this abuse to fester.

The public isn’t fooled. Polling has shown that 73% of Britons support a national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal. Yet Starmer and his ministers remain stubbornly resistant, hiding behind excuses about “delays” while survivors are left to relive their trauma without justice. This isn’t just a betrayal of the victims—it’s a betrayal of the British people, who deserve a government that prioritises their safety over ideological Liberal fantasies.

Labour’s cancellation of these inquiries is a sickening abdication of responsibility. By allowing local authorities to mark their own homework, the government has ensured that the truth about the grooming gang scandal will remain buried, along with the hopes of those who trusted them to deliver justice. If this isn’t a wake-up call to reject the failed doctrines of multiculturalism and liberal cowardice, then what is? The victims deserve better. Britain deserves better.