Burnham Breaks Wind

Damage Control From a Mayor Who Has Everything to Fear

The national grooming gang inquiry has not yet begun. But the political effort to control it already has.

As predicted, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham publicly rebuked critics of the inquiry’s new chair, urging them to stop “reading politics into it” and to “let the inquiry do its business.” Damage control from a man who has everything to fear from what this inquiry might expose.

Burnham is not some outside observer. He is neck-deep in this scandal’s recent history.

As mayor, he commissioned, promoted and defended the Oldham Assurance Review. A whitewash sold to the public as independent but designed from the start to avoid the most serious evidence of institutional failure.

That review was not botched incompetence. It was a cover up. Look at what it actually did:

it cleared political figures of wrongdoing
it refused to interview a single Pakistani grooming gang survivor
it accepted political explanations without testing them against evidence
it concluded there was no cover up despite confirming children were gang raped, public officials and politicians knew what was taking place, and information was hidden from parents.

There is no plausible explanation for clearing politicians while excluding the most relevant survivors other than protection.

Burnham knows exactly what he faces. He commissioned a review that cleared his allies while silencing survivors. He defended a process that excluded Pakistani rape gang victims. His review was used to block any further inquiry. Now he is desperately trying to manage expectations before the real investigation begins.

Burnham thinks containing the inquiry’s scope will protect him. He is wrong. The evidence of his role in commissioning institutional cover-up is already established. The only question is whether this inquiry will have the independence to follow where that evidence leads and call Burnham to testify under oath.

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Burnham’s intervention is not defending justice. It is defending himself. And he has every reason to be afraid.

And for those that have asked. All Andy Burnham has to do is name the time and place. I will present the evidence of his role in the cover up of the industrial scale gang rape of children to his face if he dares face me.

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I’m Raja Miah. For seven years, I led a small team that exposed how politicians protected the rape gangs. Before that, I spent over a decade safeguarding children and protecting communities from extremists.

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– Raja Miah MBE