Arooj Shah, Andy Burnham And The Pakistani Network The National Rape Gang Inquiry Must Investigate
He Kissed Her On The Steps Of Number 10: The Image They Wanted You To See
On Monday afternoon Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street as Prime Minister and the cameras catch him working the crowd outside Number 10. In among the handshakes and hugs there's a kiss for Arooj Shah, until May the leader of Oldham Council. The footage went out live on national television.
I watched it and I wasn't surprised. That's the honest answer. Eight years of doing this and nothing about who stands next to whom surprises me any more. But I want you to look at that image properly, because everything I'm about to tell you sits in court reports and newspapers, on the Combined Authority's own website, and in her own mouth. I don't need to speculate and I never have.
The Record She Cannot Dispute
One of the men closest to her political operation was Mohammed Imran Ali. Everyone in this town calls him Irish Imy. In 2013 he was jailed for assisting Dale Cregan after driving him to a safe house. Cregan went on to murder PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes. The Manchester Evening News has repeatedly described Ali as the getaway driver for the police killer. He is a convicted heroin dealer who has spent most of his adult life inside, the MEN reported his recall to prison, and this year, conviction spent, he was reported to be standing for a council seat in Werneth.
Shah is regularly seen driving round the streets of the town in the passenger seat of a Bentley driven by her friend Irish Immy. I'll leave it to you to speculate where a convicted heroin dealer and viagra salesman who spent most of his adult life in prison got his wealth from.
Now here's the bit people outside Oldham struggle to believe. When Arooj Shah was asked about her relationship with this man, she didn't deny a word of it. She said she couldn't turn her back on people she'd known since childhood. The Spectator wrote this year that the friendship goes back decades. Her own brother is a convicted criminal, and she has acknowledged that herself, on her feet, in the council chamber.
Stuart Greer
Then there is Zia Hussain. He was convicted for nine years at Bradford Crown Court after admitting conspiracy to kidnap and assault. The court heard his victims were stripped and beaten and tortured with electric clamps and hot wax. When the police arrived, they found blood splattered all over the walls.
I published the photograph of Shah celebrating an election win alongside him. He was wearing a red Labour rosette. Council lawyers wrote to me. It makes no difference. The photograph didn't change. It's still there.
So that's the company. On the record, all of it.
The Man Who Leaned In
People will tell you Monday was only a crowd, that politicians hug people all day. No. At the Combined Authority, every council leader gets their policy brief handed to them personally by the Mayor. Burnham gave Shah the equalities portfolio in 2021. Oldham's voters threw her out of her seat in 2022 and the brief went elsewhere. She got back in during 2023 and Burnham handed it straight back, welcomed her by name in his own announcement as his lead for Equalities and Communities. Council papers show her still presenting work in that capacity through 2024. Then there's the Tackling Inequalities Board, which she chaired while Burnham sat as a member.
Her friendships were national news by then. The voters of St Mary's had already removed her once. Voters in Chadderton a second time. And Burnham looked at all of it, twice, and decided this was the person who should speak for equality across nearly three million people. In a city region where thousands of girls were raped while the institutions he presided over looked the other way.
Burnham didn't stumble into that kiss. He knows who Shah is. With the National Inquiry coming to Oldham, he knows he needs her help.
We Did Not Come This Far To Kneel At The Gates Of Number 10.
The campaign to expose the cover up of the industrial scale gang rape of little White girls by bloc postal vote supplying clans of Pakistani men has never depended on the powerful giving us permission.
Just look how we forced a national statutory inquiry that the establishment did everything possible to prevent.
Now comes the harder fight. We must force the national inquiry to call Burnham to account for what happened on his watch. He must be made to answer for his role in the cover up. He must be forced to testify on Operation Hexagon.
As Prime Minister, he will use every tool of government to avoid it. He will have the lawyers, the advisers and the friendly newspapers.
It makes no difference. I have you.
If you believe Andy Burnham must answer for what was done under his authority, stand with me and support the campaign that will see politicians made to answer for what they did.
Why This Belongs Inside The Inquiry
Here's what eight years in this town has taught me. Power in towns like Oldham is assembled through networks. Those networks mobilise votes, and political leaders reward the people who control them with access and influence.
The girls had no network. Nobody delivered anything for them, so nobody in authority ever had a single reason to fear the cost of ignoring them.
The question the inquiry must now answer is whether that influence also bought protection while children were being failed. It has been told to look at police failure and safeguarding failure. Nobody has told it to look at the relationships between political leaders and the people who put them where they are. Monday's photograph is the reason it must.
The former leader of the first town selected for local investigation, who repeatedly voted to prevent a national inquiry and is herself incriminated in Operation Hexagon, wrapped in an embrace by the new Prime Minister, in front of the world, while the record of who stood behind her career sits in the reports waiting for anyone bothered enough to read it.
Burnham was Mayor while Oldham's children waited for justice. Shah was a political leader he elevated while questions about her associations were already in public view. Both must now be compelled to give evidence under oath. The kiss lasted a second. The relationship behind it took years to build.
I've watched Labour politicians and Pakistanis like Shah nibble samosas and embrace each other for eight years. But this time it is different. This time they did it on the steps of Number 10.
I’m Raja Miah MBE. For nearly eight years, I have led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.
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