The Labour Party hasn’t just turned its back on grooming gang victims — it’s standing in the way of the full truth to protect its own skin. By now, we should be under no illusions: Labour simply does not want to confront the industrial-scale horror of grooming gangs. Time and again, they have shown they are more concerned with protecting political sensitivities than protecting working class British girls. And now, Lucy Powell has made their cowardice crystal clear.

On live radio, no less, the Cabinet Minister and Leader of the Commons dismissed questions about grooming gangs with 17 sneering words: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Let’s get that dog whistle out.” A dog whistle? That is how Powell refers to one of the darkest stains on modern Britain’s conscience?

Her comment wasn’t just offensive — it was contemptuous. It belittled victims. It sneered at justice. And it revealed Labour’s deep-rooted discomfort with even talking about this monstrous crime.

This was no gaffe. It was the mask slipping. Powell said what many in Labour quietly believe — that the grooming gang scandal is inconvenient, awkward, and best kept in the shadows. Well, it’s not going away. And her apology in the Commons — rote, rehearsed, and far too late — fools no one.

Even now, Labour refuses to support a national inquiry. That’s not just a missed opportunity. That is an active betrayal. It’s worse than a slap in the face — it’s a deliberate decision to keep victims voiceless, perpetrators protected, and alleged cover-ups untouched. Local investigations are not enough.

They have repeatedly failed. We’ve seen it in Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxford — each time, the story was the same: girls ignored, whistleblowers silenced, officials paralysed by fear of being branded racist.

This isn’t speculation. It’s been documented in report after damning report. And yet Labour says: let’s not have a national inquiry. Why? Are they scared of what it would reveal?

Victims like Sarah Wilson, one of the brave young women abused in Rotherham, saw straight through Powell’s comments. She rightly said they “showed what survivors have been up against all these years” and confirmed what many have suspected: Labour “never cared and never will.”

Her words speak louder than any pre-scripted apology. And still, Powell clings to her job. Still, Sir Keir Starmer defends her. Still, Labour pretends that their refusal to act is somehow “compassionate” or “measured.” It’s nothing of the sort. It’s cowardice. It’s dereliction of duty. And it’s shameful.

This is not about race. It’s not about party point-scoring. It’s about justice — something Labour claims to stand for but clearly won’t deliver when it matters. Thousands of girls, many of them white and working-class, were raped, beaten, trafficked and discarded.

The perpetrators acted with impunity, aided by silence and paralysed institutions. That isn’t something you brush off as a “dog whistle.” That is something you root out with everything you’ve got.

But Labour? They block a national inquiry. They spin and dodge. And when pressed, they smear the truth as racism and those who speak it as bigots.

Well, enough is enough. And if Lucy Powell searched deep within herself and found a moral conscience she would resign.

Until Labour faces up to its failures and backs a full national inquiry, it remains complicit in the cover-up of Britain’s most sickening scandal.