Rewarding the Complicit: Starmer's VAWG Adviser Lobbied a Peerage for Oldham's Rape Gang Cover-Up
Appointed on Saturday to Protect Women. By Monday She Was Lobbying a Peerage for a Rape Gang Cover-Up.
The Telegraph have now also reported that Baroness Harriet Harman has been accused of offering a peerage to Arooj Shah, the recently ousted leader of Oldham Council. The accusation is accurate. What the Telegraph did not report is what makes it worse.
Harman was appointed by Keir Starmer on Saturday as his adviser on violence against women and girls. Forty-eight hours later she posted a public message to Shah asking about the next Lords list. She has since deleted it. The screenshot exists.
The woman tasked by the Prime Minister with advising on violence against women and girls spent her first working week lobbying to elevate a council leader whose authority was found to have failed the child victims of mass rape in Oldham.
WHAT THE TELEGRAPH LEFT OUT ABOUT SHAH
The Telegraph noted that Oldham Council was criticised in a 2022 independent report into grooming gang offences. It did not say who Shah is.
Shah is regularly seen in the company of a convicted heroin dealer who was the getaway driver for a cop killer. Her brother is a convicted money launderer. She celebrates election victories alongside a man convicted for kidnap and torture.
These are not historic associations. They are current and documented.
THE DELETION
Harman removed the tweet. It was captured before she did so by Matthew Torbitt, a former Labour adviser, who posted the screenshot publicly. Harman has not explained why she deleted it. Downing Street has said she has no official role in deciding honours. That statement does not address what she was doing or why she felt the need to remove the evidence of it.
McMAHON GETS A KNIGHTHOOD
The Financial Times has confirmed that Jim McMahon, Labour MP and former leader of Oldham Council, is in line for a knighthood in the King's birthday honours list next month. McMahon is the other former Oldham council leader being rewarded by this government. He is also neck deep in the town's rape gang cover up.
Two former Oldham council leaders. One knighthood. One Lords seat. Both from an authority whose institutional failure to protect child rape victims has been the subject of a national inquiry.
HARMAN'S MANDATE AND HER CONDUCT
Starmer appointed Harman because he needed cover on violence against women and girls following sustained political pressure. Her first act in that role, in terms of what is now publicly documented, was to lobby for a peerage for a woman whose council buried the rape of children.
Downing Street can clarify the terms of her appointment. It cannot change what she wrote or when she wrote it.
THIS IS HOW YOU STOP IT
Write to the House of Lords Appointments Commission at holac@parliament.uk. Put Shah's record on paper and make them respond to it. Reform UK councillors in Oldham will be asked to table a motion at the next full council meeting calling on the authority to write formally to HOLAC opposing any nomination. A letter from the council itself carries weight that individual submissions cannot match. If councillors vote it down, that vote is on record.
Nobody proposes a peerage in a two-line tweet without having run the conversation already. Harman is not acting alone. Somewhere in the Labour leadership, someone looked at Arooj Shah's record and decided she deserved elevation to the second chamber of the British Parliament. They looked at everything above and concluded she was the right choice. That decision was made. It was made deliberately. And it was made by people who believe they will never be held to account for it.
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.
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