Humza has learnt nothing from the grooming-gangs scandal
He is weaponising the very same fears that led this abuse to go unchecked.

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Regardless of your views on Elon Musk, it’s clear that he’s accomplished something Britain’s own journalists, politicians and activists couldn’t. He forced the issue of grooming gangs back to the forefront of national discussion. With just a few posts on his platform, X, Musk managed to place the UK government under such intense scrutiny that prime minister Keir Starmer was compelled to respond in a public statement.
The phrase ‘grooming gangs’ is used to describe the mass rape and torture of thousands of mostly white, underaged girls across the UK at the hands of predominantly British Pakistani gangs. As though this wasn’t awful enough, the subsequent investigations and inquiries revealed that those best placed to protect and liberate these girls from their living nightmare chose to look the other way, in the name of ‘cultural sensitivity’ or out of fear of being branded a ‘racist’.
It’s this very fear that is being weaponised once again – this time, by former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf. Yousaf, who had been remarkably quiet about grooming gangs up to this point, took to X this week to share the mugshots of a recently convicted grooming gang that was operating in Glasgow. The post sought to emphasise that all seven of the convicted rapists are all white. Yousaf wrote: ‘No messages of anger or disgust from Farage, Reform or Musk about one of the biggest child grooming gangs in the UK who were sentenced yesterday. It’s almost like they don’t actually care about keeping children safe but have an ulterior motive?’ The implication here is clear: anyone focussing on British Pakistani grooming gangs can only be motivated by racism.
With this inflammatory and false comparison, Yousaf has clearly missed what the whole grooming-gang scandal was about. In a just world, child rapists are caught, convicted and left to rot in prison. We expect our authorities to do their job without fear or favour, especially when it comes to pursuing suspected child abusers.
Thankfully, this appears to be precisely what happened with the Glasgow case that Yousaf has singled out. These poor excuses for human beings were all handed orders for lifelong restriction – meaning they will be either in prison or on parole for the rest of their lives. I don’t recall seeing Farage, Musk or any political party objecting to this fact, nor attempting to prevent honest discussion about it.
What Yousaf ignores is that the reason the public is so utterly incensed and animated by the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs is because our authorities and institutions were complicit in their unforgivable crimes. Those in power behaved in ways that they simply would not have behaved were the perpetrators white. The people in positions to actually do something about it either covered it up or looked the other way.
As though these revelations weren’t difficult enough for the victims and the general public to digest, we also have to contend with the fact that the small proportion of the perpetrators who were eventually charged have not faced anything close to adequate justice. The leader of a Rochdale grooming gang – who was told he would be deported in 2014 – is still currently roaming free in the UK. He is living and working in the very town where he committed his abhorrent crimes, having served just two years and six months in prison. Stories like these, not racism, are why there have been renewed calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend Yousaf’s race-baiting cynicism is actually a statement of fact – that the outrage directed at British Pakistani grooming gangs is motivated solely by a preoccupation with their skin colour. Then one does wonder how someone like Yousaf can grandstand against this, given he is guilty of fixating on people’s skin colour himself. In 2020, he stood before Scottish parliament and angrily decried the large number of white people in senior positions in Scottish public life. This was, as Yousaf put it, ‘not good enough’.
Yousaf is more than happy to make judgements based on skin colour – be that raging that there are too many white people in Scottish public life, or celebrating the importance of people that ‘look like’ him attaining positions of power. He thinks this is acceptable, so long as it bolsters his pro-diversity narrative. Yet he suddenly understands that it is wrong to make value judgements and criticise people based on skin colour when he believes his political opponents are doing it.
Yousaf was paid £176,780 per year in his role as first minister and now has a sizable pension to look forward to. And while he doesn’t intend to stand for re-election as an MSP in 2026, he will no doubt have a cushy private-sector role awaiting him. He enjoys a level of wealth and security that will be unfathomable to the thousands of vulnerable, impoverished girls that were abused across the UK and discarded by our authorities. What these girls will now recognise in Humza Yousaf is yet another person with power and privilege demanding that we look anywhere other than the actual problem. Nothing has been learned.
Stephen Knight is host of the Godless Spellchecker podcast and the Knight Tube. Follow him on X: @GSpellchecker
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