Just to show that I’m not obsessed with Donald Trump, today I turn my righteous indignation on Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour Party. A man, we are led to believe, who believes in the enlightenment of a caring society.
He could fool me. Actually, he can’t.
While many profess to oppose Corbyn for his impractical economic policies, or his management competence, curiously they continue to cite their admiration for the man’s essential humanity in upholding the rights and virtues of the vulnerable and the downtrodden. But the man’s humanity is questionable at best – and always has been. All the more so after he fired earlier this week a member of his shadow cabinet for speaking out against the grooming of young women, mostly white, girls by men of mostly Asian origin.
Sarah Champion was, ironically, his Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities. Until, that is, she wrote a newspaper article deploring the exploitation of girls, lured into prostitution and subject to rape at the hands of their clients, who for the most part are men of Pakistani heritage. Many of their crimes were committed in Champion’s own parliamentary constituency, Rotherham, an industrial town in Yorkshire with a large Muslim community.
Arguably, or from my point of view inarguably, Champion not only had the right to focus on the issue, she also had the duty to do so. She should have been applauded for it.
But Corbyn wasted no time condemning her views, and demanding her resignation on the grounds that she had grievously offended a religious group that he and his cohorts seem to think is worthy of our uncritical respect. It deserves every respect, of course, but not beyond the point at which it condones, if only by staying silent, the behaviour of men who have brought the dubious values derived from the primitive superstitions of remote villages in Pakistan – among other backward countries she mentioned – to a civilised and tolerant society like Britain.
The actions of these men, and the cultural viewpoint, which they seem to feel justifies them, are plainly and indefensibly disgusting.
Corbyn was right in the statement he issued explaining Champion’s dismissal that misogyny, sometimes in extreme forms, exists in all sections of society. But that missed the point entirely. It exists in its most glaringly prevalent manifestation in one community above all: men of Asian origin who adhere to the Muslim faith in its most extreme medieval form.
Terrorism tends to be defined in today’s newspaper headlines by acts of physical violence against innocent civilians, such as the latest atrocity in Barcelona. The violent acts committed against vulnerable white girls in Rotherham and other northern mill towns, falls into precisely the same category. It may be worse.
That Corbyn fails to see, or acknowledge this, is shameful. The man is a social charlatan disguised as a caring socialist.
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