Uh oh. Commons Leader Lucy Powell has found herself in hot water after making some rather careless remarks on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions yesterday. The Labour politician sparked outrage over her reaction to a point by Tim Montgomerie – the founder of Conservative Home who has since aligned himself with Reform – who brought up a recent Channel 4 documentary on grooming gangs.
Cutting across him, Powell replied: ‘Oh we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we?’ ‘No,’ Montgomerie responded. ‘There was a real issue…’. Not that Powell appeared willing to listen, interrupting again: ‘Let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we?’ Oo er. Talk about flippant!
Listeners were quick to register their upset at Powell’s remarks, with Conservative frontbencher Robert Jenrick fuming on Twitter: ‘Labour’s Lucy Powell thinks it’s a “dog whistle” to demand arrests and accountability for the rape gangs. What a disgusting betrayal of the victims.’ Meanwhile ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who has consistently pushed for a national inquiry into Britain’s grooming gang scandal, has written to Powell urging the MP to issue a public apology for her ‘deeply, deeply offensive’ comments. He added: ‘To reduce this issue to a “dog whistle” is abhorrent and insulting. It is a national disgrace that demands accountability, not such pathetic deflection.’ And now shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has called on Powell to resign, raging: ‘Her comment belittles thousands of girls who were raped by grooming gangs over decades.’ Strong stuff.
The pushback follows frustration that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is not pursuing a national probe into UK grooming gangs – with Home Office minister Jess Phillips telling the Commons that councils would instead receive ‘support’ to undertake their own investigations. For her part, Powell has now issued an apology – tweeting that: ‘I regard issues of child exploitation and grooming with the utmost seriousness. I am sorry if this was unclear. I was challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself.’ Be that as it may, her blunder won’t help perceptions that Labour is shying away from the matter…
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