The Islamophobia scandal has one silver lining: Labour's game is finally up - Kelvin MacKenzie

After all, Rayner announced it on February 28, the official beginning of Ramadan, a major event in the Muslim calendar where no food or drink is consumed between dawn and sunset for a month.

Nobody can seriously claim that it was an accident. It was a clear signal to Muslims that we are on your side and against the idea of free speech if it’s going to imperil your voters staying with us.

The public consultation closed yesterday, and for the first time, there was some good news. News that will send a shiver down the backbone of the Prime Minister, if he has one.

And it shows that the public knows what Labour’s (and radical Islam’s) game is. They recognise that the whole point of a definition to be used across the public sector is to stop politicians speaking up about the predominantly Muslim grooming gangs.

The good news poll came in a poll which was carried out by J L Partners among 2,000 people. The first question was how they would vote in a General Election.

Reform polled 29 per cent (my bet is they will do better than that), Labour 23 per cent, Tories 17 per cent and Lib Dems 14 per cent.

But it was the second question that was the banger. They were asked how they would vote if Labour brought in a definition of Islamophobia. This time Reform rose by one point to 30 per cent and Labour fell by three points to 20 per cent.

If that happened at a general election, that would be the difference between a Reform majority of 20 seats without an Islamophobia definition and 106 if one were brought in.

So, Labour would lose a million votes and a fall in seats from 155 to 103. I’m delighted to see that the public has seen through Labour’s little game.

After all, for a decade or more, the grooming gangs escaped scrutiny of their attacks because public bodies like the police and local councils didn’t want to act or say anything for fear of being accused of racism.

It wasn’t until a Times journalist made it his business to business to discover what was going on in Rotherham and the like that the scandal was uncovered.

Were it left to the social services of the local authorities, we might still not know about these vile perverts today.

In the general election last year, Muslims, angered at Gaza and the spotlight on grooming gangs, flexed their muscles by switching votes, often to one of their own or the Green party.

Bowing to pressure, Labour set up the Islamophobia working group under the former Tory Cabinet minister Dominic Grieve. They have been meeting in secret, with members of the public being denied the right to give their views.

Rayner knew who she was hiring when she got Grieves, as he had previously called discussion around grooming gangs as ‘’anti-Muslim’’. It would have been more accurate to describe the gangs as ‘’anti-white girls’’ but nobody ever heard that from Grieves.

Grieves has been wandering around the political desert since losing the Tory Party whip over trying to block Brexit in Parliament. Next step to obscurity came when he stood unsuccessfully as an independent in the 2019 general election.

He is the only non-Muslim member on the panel. When questioned, Grieves said he hoped his definition would come down on ‘’micro-aggressions’’, a phrase bandied about by the diversity and inclusion trade.

The Labour hierarchy doesn’t seem to understand that a definition forged for Muslims by Muslims is inherently divisive.

As the Telegraph’s Charles Moore pointed out, how can ‘’community cohesion’’ be assured if one group can impose its definition on everyone else?

I guarantee whatever words are put forward by this special interest group will make the situation worse.

What would be more helpful is a wider acknowledgement of the incapability of radical Islam with the values of a free and open society, such as Britain.

That way, there wouldn’t be a need for a definition.