Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are like the two ugly sisters, desperately squeezing their shape-shifting feet into Elon Musk’s glass slipper, clambering to outdo the other and be his belle of the ball. But it should be indisputable that, given previous tragic events, any MP who does not speak up for a fellow parliamentarian against an orchestrated social media pile-on is not fit to be in politics, let alone to lead a political party.
Musk, Robinson and child sexual exploitation
Last week Oldham councillor Arooj Shah said that, in July 2024, Oldham council voted in favour of instigating an inquiry into historic local child sexual exploitation. It would first ask the government to conduct such an inquiry and, should the government recommend that it be initiated locally, it would undertake to do so.
In October 2024 Jess Phillips, as safeguarding minister, replied that she believed it was for Oldham Council to commission an inquiry into local child exploitation. The council has since set to work, liaising with abuse survivors and Telford Council, which had previously conducted a similar investigation. On-the-ground inquiries of this sort, at a local level, are seen as the way forward and have won the support of child abuse survivors.
Musk, multi-billionaire owner of X, for some reason decided to swoop in from the other side of the planet at that moment, and insist she be imprisoned, calling her a “rape genocide apologist”. Maybe he has been influenced by far-right convicted felon Stephen Yaxley Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) who has been obsessed with the ethnic aspect of a selected sample of the grooming gang scandals. Robinson never referred, of course, to the Norwich case, the Glasgow case, the Cambourne case, or the Berkhampstead case, among others, which involved white British perpetrators.
Musk went on to suggest that Robinson is a political prisoner and demanded his release, seemingly unaware that he is in prison for an unrelated crime.
Despite the fact that Musk has no apparent knowledge of the UK justice system or the country’s political workings, or that he seems ignorant of the events that led to a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, his huge online following and influence makes this intervention critically dangerous for Phillips.
Recommendations to protect MPs from online abuse
Two of our elected representatives were murdered within just five years of each other. Jo Cox MP in 2016 and David Amess MP in 2021. Two lives tragically lost to extremism.
Following the murder of Amess, Home Secretary Priti Patel promised big changes. She even suggested imposing a ban on online anonymity to end the relentless abuse of MPs. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle urged social media companies to “get your act together” and Conservative MP Mark Francois suggested that the provisions of the online safety bill then making its way through parliament, be “toughened up markedly”, specifically citing the systematic online vilification of MPs.
Francois proposed an act of parliament, ‘David’s Law’, which while accepting that people in public life could be legitimately criticised, would ensure they and their families be legally protected from abuse. Francois, the MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, even went so far as to declare that he was minded to drag the CEO’s of Facebook and Twitter, “if necessary kicking and screaming, to account for their actions or rather inactions that make them even richer than they already are”.
This week Musk has made an online target of Phillips but, blinded by the lure of limelight, the eyes that cried those tears in 2021 are suddenly desert-dry.
Jess Phillips: a relentless campaigner for women and girls
Phillips is widely recognised as a relentless campaigner for the protection of women and girls, but no stranger to controversy when it comes to defending her convictions. It was Phillips who criticised certain members of the Muslim community for what she described as importing wives for their disabled sons, and she refused to support Muslim parents campaigning against education of same-sex relationships in schools.
Each year since the death of Sarah Everard in March 2021, she reads out the name of every female to have died in the UK that year at the hands of men.
Love her or hate her, she is authentic. Amess, the murdered Conservative MP, voted to bomb Syria, was anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. He was a political anathema to Phillips, yet despite their political differences, she wrote an article for the Independent in tribute to him, and against online vilification of MPs. “He was a proper, decent constituency MP, whose constituents and their needs were on his mind all the time” she wrote.
In contrast, Phillips has received no such support in her time of need. Kemi Badenoch doubled down in PMQs on 8 January, refusing to speak in support of her and bizarrely and incorrectly accusing her of turning away child abuse victims. Liz Truss attacked Phillips as being on the side of the rapists, and Farage has refused to condemn the online language used against her, despite apparently being embroiled in a since-withdrawn claim that he was advised it was literally too unsafe for him to hold an MP surgery in his constituency of Clacton.
What are they thinking of, not to stand in support of Phillips as the crazed attack dogs are now let loose upon her? And it’s not just them. Where are the other opposition MPs? James Cleverly, Mel Stride, Chris Philp, David Davis, Jeremy Hunt? Are Patel and Francois suddenly struck dumb? If anything should happen, God forbid, their silence is surely their complicity.
Child sexual exploitation inquiry
Child sexual abuse is an horrific phenomenon which appears to be prevalent the world over. From churches to care homes, sports clubs to schools, it has cast a shadow over society for centuries. All nations, ethnicities and social classes are implicated.
The previous government commissioned a public inquiry into events in towns throughout the UK and, in addition, several local ones also reported, but then failed to implement the recommendations. In 2017, as mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham commissioned an independent review of current and historic child sexual exploitation in the Greater Manchester area, the final part of which is currently underway. The present government is keen to enact the findings of the recent reports as soon as possible, and the victims’ groups want action now.
No opposition MP had raised any concerns about how this was being handled, until Musk’s tweets. Phillips has had her life endangered by his online attacks; but when Musk said ‘jump’, the worst of our MPs asked ‘how high?’
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