On Matters of Truth

In case you have been wondering where I went, I am still here.

The migraines have been getting worse. Bad enough that I made the decision to pack a bag and take myself and my daughter off for the weekend, somewhere quiet, to let my head settle and to think. There is only so long you can keep working through them before the work starts to suffer, and I would rather step back for a little while than put out something half made.

A good number of you have contacted to ask about my analysis of the Rape Gang Inquiry report. Yes, the piece is written. It has been sitting finished for a while. What I have not decided is whether it goes out.

I will be honest with you about why. It has become clear to me over these past months that a section of this space has appointed itself the praetorian guard of Restore. Anyone who turns a critical eye on them is marked down as an enemy to be dealt with. I already know what happens when I take the same methodology I have used on councils, on police forces, on the assurance reviews, and point it at Restore instead. The work does not change. The reception does. Publishing my analysis of this report wins me no new friends, and I have lost the appetite for collecting enemies I never set out looking for.

Then there is Makerfield.

Andy Burnham is now a Member of Parliament, and the talk in Westminster is no longer whether he stands for the leadership but when. The man whose assurance review I have spent years pulling apart is now on the road to Number Ten, and the electorate has just handed him the ticket.

Look at the numbers before anyone tells me I am being dramatic. Burnham took the seat on 54.8 per cent. Reform managed 34.5 and were beaten by better than nine thousand votes. Restore Britain, the party half of this space has decided is the answer to everything, polled 6.8 per cent and finished a distant third. A fringe.

That is the verdict of the voters of Makerfield, written in plain figures, and no amount of noise online rewrites it.

It took me back to the campaign we have all been on. The doors knocked, the documents read into the early hours, the survivors who trusted us with the worst days of their lives. And the sad truth that sits underneath all of it.

The vast majority of people do not care that so many little girls were gang raped or whether there was a cover up of what took place. They never did. Worse, of the minority who do care, most of the ones operating in the political space have only ever seen it as a vehicle. A grievance to be mounted and ridden as far as it will carry them, then put back in the stable the moment they have the power to do something. The children were never the point for these people. The cause was a means of securing power.

I am not writing this to wallow. I am writing it because eight years in I owe you an honest account of the ground we are now standing on. The campaign has been weaponised.

So I am going to take a little time, and a few more long walks, and think properly about where I go next. In the meantime, if you want my analysis on the rape gang report then let me know in the comments below.

I’m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.

You won’t see me on the BBC. You won’t read my work in the legacy press. That’s not an accident. I take this to a place from where there is no coming back.

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Raja 🙏