Nigel Farage rips apart Keir Starmer issuing grooming gang threat over Labour ‘failures’

Nigel Farage has issued a warning to Labour amid a row surrounding the horrific grooming gang cases that have plagued the UK.

Following the government’s decision not to hold a national inquiry, the leader of Reform UK hopes the “threat” of his party will push Labour into changing their mind.

Mr Farage told the Express: “Nearly every council area in which these abuses happen were Labour-run areas.

“There are a lot of people out there who knew what was happening and chose not to talk about it, and who knows, were there things that perhaps could have done more of in his early days as the director of public prosecutions? I don’t know the answer to that, I mean, were these attacks on girls racially motivated? I don’t know the answer to that.”

He added how he believes Labour’s “idea of mass open immigration and multiculturalism clearly doesn’t always work and they can’t face that, it’s too difficult”.

On Wednesday, a Tory bid to launch a new national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal was voted down by Labour MPs.

The amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill was rejected by 364 to 111, a majority of 253.

Mr Farage added: “There has to be a public inquiry, but not one on child sexual abuse on a broad scale. This has to be a rifle shot, not a shot gun, into the specific issue and area of grooming gangs.

“Very interesting, 76% of the country wants this inquiry. Andy Burnham came out yesterday (January 9), backed this inquiry, and I’ve said, if the government doesn’t do it, we at Reform UK, will raise the money and we will do it. And I think the threat of that will push Starmer into doing it.”

Mr Farage said he had “no idea” if would offer to fund the inquiry, adding that he is sure “there are plenty of British people that would”.

The party leader addressed members at a regional conference in Surrey on Friday. He insisted that “we deserve to know the truth” about the grooming gang scandal.

He said: “It’s been going on for decades but because of the two-tier approach that we take in Britain – two-tier policing, two-tier justice – we treat some communities very differently to other communities.

“Don’t we deserve to know the extent of this across our country? Don’t we deserve to know how long it’s been going on? Don’t we deserve to know how many of those young women have been abused?”

Several investigations have been conducted into grooming gangs in various parts of England, including Rotherham, Bristol, Cornwall, and Derbyshire.

An inquiry into abuse in Rotherham found 1,400 children had been sexually abused over 16 years, predominantly by British Pakistani men.

An investigation in Telford found that up to 1,000 girls had been abused over 40 years – and that some cases had not been investigated because of “nervousness about race”