Legal Capacity

Under him, says Andrew Tate, "It will feel like England in 1995 again." The year I turned 18. Tate's vision may differ, since he was only nine.

Anything up to 35 years ago to my certain knowledge, and no doubt longer ago than that, there were what would now be called grooming gangs in towns and villages that were effectively or actually 100 per cent white, and which remain overwhelmingly so. Just as white men who commit certain offences are "lone wolves", black men who do so are "gang members", and brown men who do so are "homegrown Islamist terrorists", yet the crimes are the same, so a certain type of organised crime syndicate is a "grooming gang" or a "rape gang" when the members are South Asian, or Muslim, or both, but a "paedophile ring" when they are not, and most emphatically when they are all white and non-Muslim. Again, though, they are the same thing.

Tomorrow morning, Radio Four will broadcast the first part of a series on the Paedophile Information Exchange. If that was not a grooming gang and a rape gang, then what ever has been or could be? It was at the very heart of the Establishment, and this year, it will be 40 years since the Thatcher Government secured a judicial fiat that, without bothering to ask Parliament, abolished the age of consent altogether. Gillick competence ought instead to be called Thatcher competence. The Major Government did write Thatcher competence into the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991. But it is applied in Northern Ireland on no authority that is apparent to anyone. And even in England and Wales, it has never been subject to a parliamentary vote. Let there be one now. And if there were to be an inquiry into the rape gangs, then Victoria Gillick should be on it.

But British inquiries take years on end to exonerate the lifelong friends who had appointed them. Gillick, Lisa McKenzie, the distinguished criminologists in the Workers Party, which has called for an inquiry: how much chance is there of having any of those, for a start? I would be right behind that. But what is the likelihood of it?