What Really Happened On My LBC Appearance

From Grooming Gangs to Andrew Tate...again...and again

“Look how easily that happened”, I exclaimed, nostrils flaring in an unprecedentedly raw showing from me. I was staring down Labour MP Alison Hume and Left-Wing journalist James Bloodworth on Iain Dale’s excellent LBC show Cross Question.

And I was very cross indeed. Ah-ha!

Just moments earlier, my political adversaries had rightly slammed the police for failing to address the Muslim grooming gangs for fear of being labelled racist.

“Part of the reason that the police didn’t pursue this is because they thought they’d be accused of being racist if they did?” asked Iain Dale.

“In terms of the grooming gangs specifically,” said James, “there can’t be any of the equivocation that we saw.”

Everybody seemed to agree.

I will now show that James – and Alison and Iain – inadvertently did exactly that of which they accused the police in the subsequent minute.

Let’s start with the definition of ‘equivocation’:

“The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.”

What Happened Next!

James starts equivocating within just a few seconds of his statement about ‘equivocation’, by stating:

“But I will also say that misogyny – as I discovered in my book – is not just a problem confined to, um, certain religious or ethnic communities. Some misogynist attitudes we see from influencers like Andrew Tate.”

This is a truly extraordinary display of equivocation.

In just 30 seconds of live radio, James manages to flip a question about the Muslim grooming gangs into “influencers like Andrew Tate”, either unaware or unconcerned that Andrew Tate converted to Islam precisely to tap into its misogynist core.

Most remarkably, he even manages to plug his book while doing it!

Nobody else seems to notice, so Iain reads out a question from a listener: “Well, just on that, Josephine says, ‘How much to blame are the influencers and manosphere podcasters for young girls in this country being unsafe?’.

This receives an agreeing hum of affirmation from Alison Hume, as if to say, “Finally, the real problem at hand – one I won’t be in trouble for discussing!”

I was lost for words.

All I could muster was, “That’s mad!”.

Andrew Tate

It Gets Madder

Looking back, it’s even madder. Even while criticising the police for being fearful of appearing racist, Alison, James and Iain all failed to say the words “Muslim”, “Islam” or “Pakistani”.

James did, however, let something telling slip by admitting that “we don’t view [women] as second-class citizens, as some more backwards cultures in the world unfortunately do”.

But when I pressed James to name these backwards cultures, he slipped away from the core of Islam (39 per cent of British Muslims believe a woman must always obey her husband), suggesting it is just the extremes and, curiously, laying the blame at the feet of…the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church - The Real Problem in the UK?

Why This Matters

If you are wondering why this matters, let me lay it out: policing is downstream of culture. While James and Alison criticise the police’s fear of seeming racist – that very fear comes from listening to shows like this. LBC has a vast audience, its conversations echoing down the streets and corridors of the UK long after each show ends.

Police officers, politicians and other key cogs in the running of our country cannot help but be influenced by what they hear. The equivocation on this show is representative of the station’s output (and that of almost every other mainstream TV and radio channel).

So, we are stuck in an endless loop whereby commentators call out the cops for their fear of seeming racist while simultaneously embodying that same timidity and – yes – equivocation.

They’re saying to police: “You were wrong to let so many children be abused in the name of social justice…but if you do your jobs – we won’t necessarily stand by you.”

Worse still, this message comes from upstanding, intelligent and high-status individuals. Alison Hume is a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom. James Bloodworth is an established writer whose book Hired – which I have read – brilliantly exposed the likes of Amazon.

This Orwellian nightmare all happened within a space of around one minute, leaving my head spinning. The next minute was a chorus of Alison and James competing with one another to see who could say the name “Andrew Tate” – the ultimate symbol of equivocation - more times.

Then, it came to me: “We’ve just been asked a question about grooming gangs, and we’ve all managed to flip it over to the Far-Right. Look how easily that happened! That was happening in the police for years, and it’s happening right in front of our eyes again. When will we learn from history? Name it for what it is.”

But then LBC called time, leaving an interesting atmosphere in the room. Here’s what happened next:

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