It was very much not politics as usual when MPs traipsed in for the first PMQs of 2025. The session would inevitably focus on the rape gangs scandal and calls for a national inquiry. Or would it?
The focus of this story about grooming gangs in several towns across northern England should not be the insomnia-fuelled interventions of Elon Musk, or the various ways the different parties are scrambling to react to events that took place a decade ago and have been widely reported on for years. It should be on justice for the victims and ensuring nothing similar can happen again. (For more on this, Hannah Barnes has written today on the way this was covered and what survivors are calling for now.)
But this is PMQs, and politics cannot be kept out for long.
Nonetheless, both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch seemed to grasp today that playing political football with the victims of the most horrific crimes would be an unedifying look for anyone seeking to run Britain. Both did their best to keep their tone sombre, their accusations and counter-accusations fact-based and measured, and their personal attacks muted.
This comes more easily to Starmer, whose issue is normally failing to show enough emotion, than it does to provocateur Badenoch. But the Tory leader was determined not to turn this into a crass student debate. Her questions, at least at first, were focused and reasonable. In the absence of a national inquiry specifically on this subject rather than on the broader issue of child sexual abuse, could the Prime Minister be certain we know the full extent of rape gang activity? And if no one has yet joined the dots between what happened in multiple towns across the country, isn’t it possible that this is still going on?
Starmer had three lines of defence. First was to highlight that there is no single united view from victims on what should happen now. Some, as Badenoch cited, want a new national inquiry in order to summon witnesses and compel them under oath to disclose what they knew then. They feel there has been a lack of accountability. Others, as Starmer pointed out, want action now on what we already know and are worried further inquiries will delay much-needed changes. The independent Alexis Jay inquiry into child sexual abuse took seven years – if a similar endeavour was begun today, Starmer argued, it would not report until 2031.
There are strong arguments on both sides. Focusing on victims’ desire for action enabled Starmer to use his second defence: that right now the Labour government is trying to make children safer, such as with the mandatory reporting laws proposed by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Monday, and that the whole House should support this. Again and again he mentioned the Tories’ amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which gets its second reading in the Commons today. The amendment, which calls for a statutory investigation into grooming gangs, obviously won’t pass – but if it did it would kill the bill entirely. It was a bold gambit for Badenoch to try to force the government into a position where the Tories can argue Labour MPs specifically voted against an inquiry. “Don’t wreck this in this misguided way,” was Starmer’s response. Then later, “You can’t wreck that bill and protect children.” In other words, attempting to turn the Conservatives’ attack against them, and make it look like it is Badenoch and her tribe who don’t want to protect children.
Defence three was to get personal and focus on Badenoch herself. Starmer, in the politest tone possible, reminded the House that the Conservative leader never raised the issues of rape gangs when she was children’s minister or minister of women and equalities. “It’s only in recent days she’s jumped on the bandwagon,” he noted, inviting her to correct him if she had in fact raised it while in government. She did not. Badenoch tried to pivot to the work she has done on the Tavistock scandal about gender-questioning children, but it was an awkward deflection and sparked howls and jeers in the chamber. Later, Starmer referred to “her recently acquired view that it’s a scandal, having spent a lot of time on social media over Christmas”.
Robert Jenrick faced a similar rebuttal earlier this week: while he has been touring broadcast studios furiously calling for another inquiry, it has been pointed out that he never raised the issue as a Home Office minister. Herein lies the risk for the Conservatives on trying to make political hay from the understandable outrage about the systemic rape of what Jay estimated to be at least 1,400 vulnerable girls, many of whom were white, by predominantly British-Pakistani grooming gangs: the record is very clear that this energetic focus did not apply when they were in government. By contrast, Starmer, who as the director of public prosecutions actually took steps to prosecute perpetrators and help victims, can point to his record and show he was calling for measures such as mandatory reporting a decade ago. There are no doubt questions for Labour about local government officials, but the attempt to turn this into a “Labour-coded scandal”, as one insider put it to me, risk backfiring.
As the session wore on, Badenoch, perhaps stung by attacks on her own record, became more aggressive. “It’s not about you, it is about the victims,” she shot back at Starmer at one point. Later, triggering another round of outraged howls, she asserted that the PM “doesn’t want questions asked of Labour MPs who may be complicit” – political football again.
There was one moment, though, which stood out: Badenoch’s taunt that the Prime Minister should “be a leader, not a lawyer”. It didn’t really land today, when the subject matter is such that a more measured, forensic approach is exactly what’s appropriate. But PMQs is a sandpit for testing out lines of attack, and you can see how this one might be sharpened and used against Starmer in future. Focus groups suggest voters increasingly see the Labour government as lacking definition or purpose, and Starmer himself as being out of touch and disconnected from their daily realities. Expect to hear the accusation that Starmer is a lawyer not a leader again.
Finally, while Starmer and Badenoch both worked hard to debate the rape gangs issue withing invoking Elon Musk, Ed Davey had no such qualms. “The spectre of the richest man in the world trying to buy a political party should give us all pause for thought,” warned the Liberal Democrat leader, referring to the (now unlikely) multimillion-dollar donation Musk reportedly dangled in front of Reform. As I wrote for Morning Call on Tuesday, Musk isn’t a British citizen and his understanding of British law and British politics appears shaky at best. But he is Westminster’s main character of 2025. And that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon.
[See also: Is Farage winning the youth vote?]
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