It would be the perfect setting for one of Monty Python’s more surreal sketches. An inquiry hears the most horrific attacks and horrendous crimes committed by a specific group, only for members of that group (picture Eric Idle and Michael Palin in absurdist costumes) to pop up and scream that it’s offensive to speak the truth.
But that is what has happened this week in Britain. The independent MP Rupert Lowe, along with Conservative shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy and others, have been hearing evidence in the independent grooming gang inquiry set up by Lowe.
The inquiry is both to pressure – and shame - the government over its lack of action, and to bring to light the scale and horror of what has happened.
In the same week where billionaire businessman Jim Ratcliffe has decided to speak up about the ‘colonisation’ of Britain by immigrants, another famous face has put his head above the parapet to comment on exactly this issue – Monty Python’s own John Cleese!
On X, Cleese wondered aloud about whether the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) might be Britophobic, in response to the MCB describing the grooming gang inquiry as, you guessed it, ‘Islamophobic’.
I can’t bring myself to write about some of what the inquiry has heard; it is too awful to hear about, and I wouldn’t inflict even hearing about it on my worst enemy, let alone GB News’ members.
Suffice to say that it is more heartbreaking and disgusting than you can probably imagine. And it happened all over the country, to our most vulnerable, by targeted groups of mostly Pakistani Muslim men.
Moreover, they organised themselves around those factors, and some are on the record in court transcripts as saying ‘we are here to f*** white girls and f*** the Government'.
I disagree with groups like this on principle. The British Government agrees in this case and officially refuses to cooperate with the MCB because of its history of support for extremist rhetoric.
But I would have thought that any organisation that sought to advance the interests of any particular group in a country would be as keen as possible on rooting out the bad elements from their community, with swift and unrelenting justice.
John Cleese has gone where others fear to tread on Islam. This is the moment the dam breaks — James Price | Getty ImagesThe MCB clearly disagree. They want to prevent the public from knowing the scale of what happened – and continues to happen to this day – in Britain.
They want to scare people from speaking the truth; in this instance, by the tried and tested method of calling anyone involved racist by another means.
The Labour Government has been trying to come up with an official definition of ‘Islamophobic’, in order to buy the support of radical elements of those communities.
It has failed thus far because of pressure from GB News and others, but also because the idea is so absurd. One cannot have a ‘phobia’ of a set of ideas, which is what Islam is.
Regardless, we are seeing more and more well-known figures breaking cover to criticise mass immigration and its effects.
If this trend continues, the national debate on these issues will only speed up. Who will be the next celebrity to speak sense?
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