Wes Streeting's U-turn

He previously wrote the foreword to a notorious 'Islamophobia' report... yet now says he opposes 'warped views of political correctness'

Wes Streeting: Is he pro-political correctness or against it?

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Wes Streeting said he had “no difficulty or qualms” with naming the “sickening” crimes of Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs. “Well meaning, but ultimately fundamentally misguided and warped views of political correctness” had enabled the rape of thousands of children, he said.

I agree. But this was quite the U-turn from the the health secretary. Consider the official definition of Islamophobia, which was signed off by Streeting himself, alongside Anna Soubry and a cross-party group of MPs, and adopted by Labour in 2019. Throughout the 68-page document, the term “grooming gangs” – which by then had been a problem for decades – was presented in inverted commas, with concern about them branded a “subtle form of anti-Muslim racism”.

The top two “tropes used to justify Islamophobia”, the document informed us, were “paedophilia” and “rape”. At one point, the report even asserted that “dangerous brown men” were no more than a figment of the Islamophobic imagination. “Age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam, such as sexual profligacy,” the document insisted, had a “modern-day iteration in the ‘Asian grooming gangs’.” There was no allowance for language to describe Muslim men who may genuinely be dangerous.

Instead, we were warned against inflaming community tension by focusing on child sex rings. One Muslim man, we were told, was “fearful of being injured by a taxi driver in the wake of a child sex case involving Asian men”. In his testimony, the man said: “Taxi driver drove his car dangerously and carelessly, frightening me.” This was used as evidence of the dangers of highlighting the abuse of children.

In their foreword, Streeting and Soubry wrote: “We hope our working definition will be adopted by Government, statutory agencies, civil society organisations.” Thus the “warped political correctness” migrated to the real world.