'A complete lack of leadership': Why aren't Jenrick and Badenoch condemning Musk?

By Michael Baggs (with Emily Maitlis & Lewis Goodall)

Conservative MPs – such as Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick – have been condemned for their response to Elon Musk’s interference in UK democracy through interest in grooming gang scandal.

Read time: 5 mins

In brief…

• Robert Jenrick has demanded the Labour government open a new enquiry into grooming gangs, despite never mentioning the subject while the Tories were in power.
• His comments on the matter, blaming people from ‘alien cultures’ have been compared to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech by The News Agents.
• They believe the Conservatives are being led by the ‘loudest voice in the room’, and now placing political gaslighting at the heart of its strategy as opposition.

What’s the story?

Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are absolutely furious.

They are furious at the Labour government for not commissioning a new national enquiry into the grooming gang child rape scandal, which first hit headlines more than 10 years ago.

The thing is, this took place during the Conservative's 14 years in power, as did a 2014 independent report into the scandal by Professor Alexis Jay – who has called on the government to finally implement her recommendations in full to protect children from grooming.

The Home Office says it is "working at pace" to now implement these, following nearly ten years of inaction by the Tories.

Both Badenoch and Jenrick were part of that former government, and Jenrick has been hauled over the coals in a new BBC interview for not once mentioning grooming gangs, child rape (or any related issues) in the House of Commons while the Tories were in power.

Following online posts from Elon Musk attacking the UK government, both Badenoch and Jenrick also chimed in, with Jenrick blaming “people from alien cultures” for UK grooming gangs.

The News Agents say words like these are comparable to Enoch Powell's controversial and divisive 1968 comments about immigration, which became known as his 'rivers of blood' speech, due to the extreme language used to describe migrant people.

Why the backlash to Tory comments?

After a crushing defeat at the 2024 General Election, the Tory party is now in a process of rebuilding under the new leadership of Kemi Badenoch. One of its biggest challenges is to tackle the rise of Reform UK, which claimed many Conservative votes when the UK went to the ballot box.

The question was whether it would counter or mimic Reform's extreme anti-immigration rhetoric in an attempt to win back that support. Now it seems that choice has been made.

"What we can definitely say is that the Conservative Party, under Kemi Badenoch, is moving in a very radical direction on many of these issues," says Lewis Goodall.

He describes Robert Jenrick's comments on the situation as "extraordinary", and believes these have been lost in the overwhelming number of moving parts in this ongoing drama.

Jenrick claimed that the grooming gang scandal "started with the onset of mass migration", and described the past 30 years as a "disastrous experiment".

"What he's basically doing is drawing a direct link between mass migration and the grooming scandal, and saying that a particular group – Pakistani men, we can presume from this – have a particular problem with grooming, which the evidence is disputed about," he says.

"The corollary of it is to say that Conservative party thinking right now is to suggest that these people should never have been allowed into the country. This entire group should never have been allowed into the country, because there is a basic incompatibility between them and British society.

"We used to have a word for that. It was called Powell-ism. That was exactly the argument that Enoch Powell made in 1968 in his "rivers of blood" speech, that there were just some groups of people who were incompatible with British society."

He adds that to tar an entire community with that brush is "astounding".

This current conversation reminds Emily Maitlis of comments made by Kemi Badenoch at the 2024 Tory party conference, where she said that "some cultures were better than others" – but would not elaborate on what she meant.

"She talked about alien cultures not having a place or not being welcomed in Britain, and I think the mistake is to think that what Jenrick said exists in a bubble," Emily says.

Emily believes both Jenrick and Badenoch may be looking to right-wing leaders in Europe, such as Hungary's Victor Orban who wants the country to return to a "Christian, ethno-nationalist" society.

What's The News Agents take?

The Conservatives now hold just 121 seats in Parliament as the opposition party. Their role is to hold the government to account, but there have been accusations that in failing to condemn Musk's comments that Labour MP Jess Phillips is a "rape genocide apologist" they are cowing to the right-wing billionaire's influence.

Emily says the response from both Badenoch and Jenrick shows a "complete lack of leadership" from the top of the party.

"It just shows an ability to be led from wherever the loudest voice of the world is coming at the moment," she says.

"The fact Jenrick makes those comments now and gets endorsement – if you like – from Kemi Badenoch suggests that they are happy to be led. That is not leadership."

And for Lewis, it highlights a major shift in stance for the Tories, which now appears to be centred on extremist language – despite evidence to counter the points they are currently making.

"We know that most child abuse in this country happens in the family, it's going to be perpetrated by white men," he says.

"There may be a particular problem around grooming gangs, and there have been white grooming gangs as well.

"To suggest that, as Jenrick does, this is a problem which started with mass migration, is one that we would have suggested was dog whistle politics until very recently, but now finds itself at the heart of Conservative political thinking."

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