By David Osland

It wasn’t factually wrong of Suella Braverman to tell a television interviewer that British Pakistani males are sometimes engaged in child sexual abuse. But it was a bravura demonstration of how to lie by omission.

One needs only glancing knowledge of the issue to be aware that tens of thousands of boys and girls have suffered horribly for decades, in institutional care, in boarding schools, in the Anglican, Catholic and Jehovah’s Witnesses churches, in football clubs and the music business.

Grand scale perpetrator Jimmy Savile was a Tory campaigner and a personal friend of Margaret Thatcher. Prince Andrew socialised extensively with Jeffrey Epstein, as did a number of well-known politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

So why would a senior Conservative cabinet minister push the Pakistani grooming gang meme popularised by the overtly fascist far right, while ignoring rich white men guilty of the same crimes? The only answer is to mount a direct appeal to racists swayed by such ideas.

The obvious advice to whoever it is in the Labour Party charged with responding is – let’s not go there. If a calm, reasoned antiracist response is out of the question – and, hey, that would be no bad thing – then at least avoid getting into the gutter with playground rejoinders such as ‘it’s the Tories that are soft on paedos, actually’.

Predictably, that’s where Labour went. Hence a Labour social media attack ad with the asinine strapline: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”

Let’s leave aside that this just isn’t true. Nobody on any part of the political spectrum would rule out custodial sentences for sex offences where appropriate. Trying to taint the prime minister as a hand-wringing Guardianista social worker manqué will persuade few.

Very much the point instead is that Sunak is of south Asian heritage, and men of south Asian heritage are the primary reference point in the way the right frames this debate.

While the racism stops mercifully short of being explicit, the intended reading is entirely clear. Well may John McDonnell tweet: “We, the Labour Party, are better than this.” The trouble is, it evidently isn’t.

Things do not get any better if principle is stripped out and the matter is considered at the level of base political calculation.

There are now some two million Muslim voters in Britain, potentially making the difference between victory and defeat in dozens of seats. In previous elections, at least 70%, and on some estimates more, have backed Labour.

Polls suggest a relatively sharp decline in their support for Labour under Starmer, who has taken less supportive stances on Palestine and Kashmir than Corbyn did.

Other Muslim concerns include the treatment dished out to Muslim MPs such as Zarah Sultana and Apsana Begum, and the readmission to Labour of Sir Trevor Phillips in 2021, after an earlier suspension on charges of Islamophobia.

Exploiting these kinds of grievances allowed George Galloway to poll over 20% in the Batley and Spen by-election two years ago. While that intervention did not prove decisive, it could easily have cost Labour a contest it ultimately won by just 323 votes.

Putting an already-strained relationship with the Muslim electorate under further pressure with dog-whistle graphics is not the smart move the person who signed off on it seems to think it is.

The big idea here is that it will help win back some of the core older white demographic in Red Wall seats. Indeed it might, if that’s enough justification for ditching any ethical considerations on this one.

But that gain will come at a price, in the shape of the Muslim and antiracist votes it will lose to both other parties and to abstention. Ironically, many of them will be lost in precisely the seats this misguided tactic is intended to help win back.

Remember also that however dirty Labour fights, the Tories are always capable of fighting dirtier. A Dutch auction on which of Britain’s two main parties can produce the most effective appeal to racist sentiment without getting busted is an appalling prospect.

In a climate in which fascist lynch mobs set cars on fire outside asylum seeker accommodation, a democratic socialist party shouldn’t be supplying the matches.

David Osland is a member of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP and a long-time left wing journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter at @David__Osland

Image: Rishi Sunak. https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/52453487910. Creator: Number 10 | Credit: Lauren Hurley / No10 Downing St. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)