I’m not racist, says Suella Braverman, I’m just ‘telling the truth’ about grooming

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Suella Braverman has dismissed suggestions she was being racist for singling out Anglo-Pakistani men during a government crackdown on grooming gangs.

The Home Secretary claimed she was telling the plain truth because members of the grooming gangs in Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale were overwhelmingly British-Pakistanis.

It comes after Ms Braverman was criticized, including by the former chief prosecutor in the Rochdale case, for indulging in dangerous rhetoric on the issue, particularly after Department of Health commissioned research ‘Interior in 2020 found no clear link between gang membership and ethnicity.

The report found that most group child molesters are men under the age of 30 and the majority are white, while adding that there is insufficient evidence to say whether members of the grooming gangs are more likely to be black or Asian.

Rishi Sunak has privately apologized for the hurt caused by Ms Bravermans’ comments, according to Shahbaz Arif, the chief whip of the Labour-led Tory Bury Council group.

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But writing in the Spectator, Ms Braverman insisted she was right.

I know my motives will be questioned, that’s a lot of politicians, she said. But there are lines that should not be crossed. If everything is racist, nothing is.

To casually accuse me of racism for speaking straight truths distorts the meaning of the term and does a great disservice to all of us who fight against racism.

Ms Braverman went on to say she was part of a group advancing old-fashioned facts that are beaten over the head with fashionable fiction.

The Home Secretary added: I guess the ethnicity of grooming gang perpetrators in a series of cases is the kind of fact that has just gone out of fashion in some quarters.

Like the fact that 100% of women don’t have a penis.

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