This was meant to be Kemi putting her best foot forward. Nice Kemi. Kind Kemi. Collaborative Kemi. All the Kemis that don’t usually see the light of day. A press conference with Chris Philp and four parents and survivors of child sexual abuse exploitation gangs. A moment of calm. Of reflection. A time to put the victims back where they always should have been. Front and centre. It was nice while it lasted.
Maybe it was an act of partial atonement. During her reply to Yvette Cooper’s statement to the Commons on the Casey report on Monday, Kemi had turned the occasion into one that was all about her. Not a hint of apology for any failings for which she and previous Conservative governments might have made. The victims and survivors were just collateral damage in her fight with Labour. Her sole focus Keir Starmer’s refusal to grant a national inquiry six months earlier. Her tone tin-eared at best. Many of her Conservative colleagues looked on in embarrassment.
“This is not a time for party politics,” Kemi said in her opening remarks to a small group of journalists. Better late than never. But we were still no closer to understanding why Monday had been exactly the right time for party politics and Tuesday wasn’t. Nor would we find out. If Kemi is capable of self-reflection she keeps her findings to herself. She is thoroughly old school with her emotions. Never explain. Just keep going.
After a few introductions, Kemi handed over to the families and survivors. Marlon, Fiona, Teresa and Lucia. Their testimony was both powerful and moving. And brave. It takes guts to speak out. Their stories were all depressingly similar. Of boys and girls whose cries for help went unheard. Whose safety was ignored by police and social workers who didn’t want to rock the boat. Survivors who were blamed for their own exploitation. Widespread cover-ups.
For the first question from the media, Kemi more or less held it together. Held the line. Remember to be kind Kemi. Thank the families and survivors. Maybe even look them in the eye. Make them think that they are the main focus of this presser. Yes, she would be happy for the inquiry to go wider into Westminster and Whitehall. It must go where the evidence leads. No one who was complicit should be exempt.
Then things began to unravel a little as a Sky reporter observed that the cover-ups had been going on for years, during most of which the Conservatives had been in power. So maybe some kind of apology was in order. Could she just maybe whisper a sorry? Or if that was too hard, then merely mouth the word? A sorryette.
No. Hear that? No. She wasn’t sorry for anything. None of this had been anything to do with her. Even though she had once been minister for children. Suella Braverman and Sajid Javid had been heroes throughout. The Tories had never put a foot wrong. The families and survivors looked on in silence.
“Er … You didn’t offer an apology,” said a BBC journalist. Now Kemi started to get notably brittle. She had said sorry sometime in the past. She couldn’t remember what it was for or who it was said to, but it would have to do. She wasn’t going to say sorry again. Now wasn’t the time for politicians to apologise. She seemed to be unaware that she had spent most of the previous day angrily demanding that the Labour government apologise. I guess she doesn’t consider Starmer to be a proper politician. “Apologies are easy,” she snapped. Though not for her.
It didn’t get any better. ITV wondered if she was as keen to investigate the Tories as she was Labour. Kemi side-stepped that one. Why should she be? The Tories had done nothing wrong. Did she regret her tone on Monday? Of course not. Elle ne regrette rien. Cue another pile-on to Labour for the imaginary crime of not voting for a Tory amendment that would have killed the child safety bill.
For most of the press conference, the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, had kept quiet. It was possible he also had his reservations about his party leader. So he had just sat silently. Nodding with compassion. Trying to look decorative. Trying to look like a man who cared. But come the end, he just couldn’t help himself as the topic moved to his favourite subject. Small boats crossings. “The lack of control at the border is fuelling the risk here,” he said. They should be locked up on sight.
For an object lesson in personal responsibility, you had to look elsewhere. Specifically to a Westminster committee room, where Louise Casey, the author of the report, was giving evidence to the home affairs select committee. Here was the humility of someone capable of not just asking other people the hard questions, but herself too. She wasn’t one to give herself a free ride. She didn’t take shit from other people and she didn’t take shit from herself.
“I was surprised to be asked to re-engage with the child sexual exploitation scandal,” she said, having authored the original report into the Rotherham gangs. “But I soon came to see it was the right thing to do. I found myself asking whether I had done a good enough job. Where had I been when the abuse continued? Did I do enough, given everything she had known? We know it’s still going on.”
You won’t find that kind of integrity – that visceral, unsparing self-examination – from many others. In Westminster they prefer to shift the blame elsewhere. Further down the food chain. Yet to realise that an apology can be an admission of strength. Not of defeat.
Casey went on to list her demands. A thorough inquiry that was done quickly. One that didn’t duck the difficult questions. One that rooted out abuse in every city. Where the data was used professionally. To show no fear. It was a big ask. But someone has to step up. So it might as well be her.
