Carl McClean

Fascinating how a Tory wet and various Labour backbenchers arrive at the exact same view of the rape gangs issue, completely nonplussed about what's actually at issue for the public. Have a listen. The gap is illuminated when he turns to discussing 'the big problems' - economics, international affairs, derelict public services - that the rape gangs narrative has displaced, in his view. All nice managerial challenges, demanding clever technocratic solutions. The public, meanwhile, appreciates that NONE of the big issues can remotely be resolved until the governing class is brought to heel, forced to reassume its sacred duty to the British people and to our national interest. So long as they are mentally borderless and in denial of our mutual duties, as a nation, they will subscribe to the types of liberal sacred cows that provided cover for the rape gangs. The public immediately spots the values behind the breakdown, the ones that drive it and make it inevitable. @RoryStewartUK can't. The rape gangs are a tangible evidence point, a token, that stands for a system that's cracked from top to bottom, with accountability fundamentally broken and elite values completely out of line with their duties to us. Yes, it's also a story about criminal gangs, and perhaps a story about the incompatibility of mirpuri clans with the British way of life. But fundamentally it's a story about how the British elite turned its back on its own electorate and refused to hear the whistleblowers when they blew their whistles, because the message was not one they wanted to hear. Mass rape was the direct product of the elite's fantasy of itself as a cosmopolitan astride the world stage, indifferent to country or people, owing allegiance only to the highest principles of human rights, not to the nation - just as Rory sees himself. Ironically, just as the people recognise this values gap with the elite, the elite itself has a narrative explaining the gap in the other direction - invoking the great satan of @ElonMusk. Since they're right, the only reason anyone could possibly think differently to them is low or mis-information. Like the Platonic guardian class they fancy themselves, as technocrats they know what the right thing to do is, but not how to get elected afterwards. Democracy is not safe in those hands.