Rollo Davies

Jeremy Clarkson on the UK’s grooming-gang failures and soft sentencing - Clarkson has argued that another public inquiry into the grooming gangs is unnecessary as we already know what the problem is. As he wrote in The Sun: “I do not believe we need a public inquiry into the grooming gangs. Public inquiries are just rooms full of people who deploy mock incredulity in the hopes they’ll end up on the Six O’Clock News. And we simply don’t need a dusty old baroness to tell us what the problem is, because we already know.” The real barrier, in his view, has been political correctness. He described a girl reporting that she had been raped by “a gang of Pakistani man,” only to be told to have “a cup of tea” to “feel better,” because the officer knows that if he reports the crime “he will be accused of racism and get cancelled.” His conclusion was direct: “We need to remove the shackles of political correctness from the police. We need to explain that it’s not racist to investigate a rapist. Do that, and we’re halfway there.” In a later column about three teenage boys convicted of raping two girls (aged 14 and 15) at knifepoint, then filming and uploading the attacks, Clarkson was equally blunt about the sentence - “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. In two separate incidents, three teenage boys took part in the rape of two girls – aged 14 and 15 – at knifepoint. They also filmed the attacks and uploaded the footage to the internet. The scumbags were found guilty and last week a judge, Nicholas Rowland, let them off with a slap on the wrist. It beggars belief.” When the judge said he wanted to avoid “criminalising” the boys, Clarkson replied: “WHAT????!!?! They did that to themselves when they raped those girls.” The consistent point across both pieces is that protecting children and properly investigating and punishing rape should not be subordinated to political sensitivities or misplaced leniency.