Ever since Brexit, no Prime Minister in the United Kingdom has completed a full term. UK PM Keir Starmer has announced his resignation on 22nd June, amidst intensified pressure within the Labour Party after rival Andy Burnham’s decisive triumph in the Makerfield by-election held on 18th June. With this win, Burnham has positioned himself to challenge Starmer for the party leadership. Party leaders changed tunes from public support to appealing for considering ‘political realities’. While there are myriad factors for Starmer’s dwindling public popularity, his deliberate inaction on the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs’ issue is said to be a key reason for the consistent slump in approval ratings.
Watch live: My statement. https://t.co/MX7ga3FRGq
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 22, 2026
Keir Starmer has been grappling with personal unpopularity among the public and Labour voters, and criticism for one after the other policy missteps, including the controversial appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US despite non-clearance from Security Vetting. What has exacerbated Starmer’s troubles are the poor election results and in-party apprehensions that Labour might suffer heavy losses at the next general election under Starmer’s leadership.
In view of the alarming political situation, party leaders have urged Keir Starmer internally to step aside and make way for Andy Burnham, who is enjoying relatively higher Labour and public popularity. Burnham’s recent electoral win has kindled the hopes that his leadership could save the Labour Party from a catastrophic rout at the next election.
In his speech on 22nd June, Keir Starmer admitted that his party viewed him as no longer fit to lead the party towards electoral victories.
The political mathematics aside, Keir Starmer has been at the blunt end of the British public’s ire over consistent Muslim appeasement for political gains. It must be recalled how PM Keir Starmer made a policy U-turn in June 2025, and committed to a statutory national inquiry into the Pakistani Muslim rape/grooming gangs after an audit and recommendations.
In January 2025, however, Starmer had called those who demanded an inquiry into grooming gangs the ones jumping on a far-right bandwagon. This came when American billionaire Elon Musk was leading the attack on the Starmer-led UK government over inaction in the Muslim rape gangs issue and failing to provide justice to non-Muslim girls victimised by mainly Pakistani Muslim men for years.
Keir Starmer’s initial reluctance to launch an inquiry into Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, and the eventual U-turn amid mounting pressure, made him lose support and popularity among both sides of the political-ideological spectrum.
Despite a Conservative pushback against Labour’s Muslim appeasement politics, the Labour government has shifted the UK’s stance to support Palestinian statehood and restrict certain arms exports to Israel, amidst domestic pressure from Muslims, who form a key Labour bloc in many areas and party leadership over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This policy shift came after Labour lost support in Muslim-heavy seats in 2024 over the Israel-Palestine issue.
Starmer has also faced two-tier policing accusations. From hosting Iftar events, calling Muslims “the face of modern Britain”, to a suicidally empathetic approach towards tackling ‘Islamophobia’, Starmer went overboard in keeping his party’s Muslim votebank content.
In fact, in December 2025, a row had erupted over the new Islamophobia definition that the Labour government led by Keir Starmer was planning to propose. The leaders of the British Hindu and Sikh communities have raised concerns that the new definition of what it calls “anti-Muslim hatred” will have a “significant chilling effect” on freedom of speech. The Labour government has faced backlash for pursuing the adoption of a definition that introduced vague and undefined concepts like “prejudicial stereotyping”, racialisation of Muslims”, “collective group with set characteristics”, “stir up hatred”, “practices and biases within institutions”.
This push towards the adoption of an Islamophobia definition that would operate as a de facto blasphemy framework came when the Labour government was facing peak public anger over failure to deliver justice to Pakistani Muslim rape/grooming gangs, mainly because of the Muslim identity of the rape Jihadis.
Keir Starmer also faced accusations of mismanagement during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Pakistani Muslim rape-grooming gangs and the complicit silence of the Keir Starmer-led Labour government
It all began in the 1980s in the town of Telford, when vulnerable girls as young as 11 were lured, picked up, treated with fake care and, like adults, drugged, raped, beaten, sold, and even killed by grooming gangs or rape gangs for a full forty years. The young girls, mostly white, were tossed from one rapist to another, most of whom were of British Pakistani origins. Three girls were murdered, and two others died in tragedies linked to the scandal. As many as 1,000 girls suffered in a town of 170,000 people. In Telford, these Pakistani grooming gangs were literally running a rape house while they made the victims believe they were in love by buying them alcohol, cigarettes, doing their mobile top-ups, buying gifts etc.
A similar racket was unfolding in Rotherham, wherein around 1,500 girls were raped, abused, sold, and bought by men of Pakistani descent in a town of 260,000 people. Many victims were gang-raped, and the abuse went on unabated from 1997 to 2013. In Rochdale, the horror began in 2002. At least 47 young girls were subjected to abuse. Such has been the (Non) response of administrative and legal authorities that the grooming gangs continue to walk freely on the streets of “Great Britain”.
Sexual abuse scandals were widely uncovered in a series of locations in the UK, including Huddersfield, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Peterborough, and Newcastle. Despite multiple reports and inquiries, investigative operations like Stovewood and Tourway, the true scale of sexual exploitation by the grooming gangs could not be determined.
These ‘grooming’ crimes continue to haunt the United Kingdom as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) reported in 2023 that there has been an 82% increase in online grooming offences against youngsters over the past five years.
The issue of Pakistani-origin men-led grooming gangs raping vulnerable white and other non-Muslim girls first became widely known in towns like Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford. According to the 2014 Jay Report on Rotherham, almost 1,400 children were sexually exploited over 16 years, predominantly by men of Pakistani descent. Though even the Conservatives are not fully innocent, the Labour government and law enforcement authorities chose deliberate inaction, fearing triggering racism against Pakistani Muslim immigrants.
A recently released Rape Gang Inquiry Report, chaired by MP Rupert Lowe, revealed how the British government and CPS essentially suppressed ethnicity and religion data. The report mentions that the Labour Party either blocked or delayed national inquiries just to avoid upsetting the Muslim votebank. It further states that rape jihadis were handed lenient sentences with no deportations, with the Starmer-era CPS letting off thousands of rape jihadis with just ‘warnings’.
OpIndia earlier reported how politicians in the UK, especially the Labour Party, downplayed grooming Jihad cases. Sarah Champion, a Labour Party MP, had to apologise for an article published in The Sun in 2017 wherein she wrote that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”. Champion had to not only apologise but also resign from her post as a shadow minister.
In 2012, Keith Vaz, a Labour Party leader and Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, downplayed the grooming jihad crimes, calling them not racially motivated and emphasising that the entire community should not be ‘stigmatised’.
The collective failure of the British governments and law enforcement authorities in bringing Muslim grooming/rape gangs, which targeted thousands of non-Muslim minor and adult girls for over two decades, stems from the idea of avoiding being ‘Islamophobic’. The Labour Party leaders were joined by the British media, who, for a long period of time, refrained from calling the Muslim rape gangs, mainly comprising Pakistani Muslim men, what they are, but chose the broader and rather vague term, “South Asian grooming gangs.”
Conservative politicians, British patriots, and Elon Musk, Starmer’s ideological adversaries, accused him of being complicit in the Pakistani rape gang crimes. Many had demanded that Starmer face charges for not taking action against these crimes during his service as the CPS head and during his tenure as Prime Minister.
Keir Starmer chose suicidal secularism and prioritised selfish political imperatives, Rishi Sunak decided to stick his neck out and speak up against the Pakistani Muslim Grooming Gangs
The Starmer-led Labour government succumbed to Muslim pressure and the ideological imperative of Muslim saviourism and chose to cover up or delay an inquiry into Pakistani Muslim rape gangs. However, former UK Prime Minister and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak never shied away from calling of Muslim rape jihadis.
Rishi Sunak was the only head of state in UK to not only call out Muslim grooming gangs, highlight how political correctness prevented politicians from speaking against rape jihad, but also outlined how he would tackle the problem of grooming gangs in the UK.
In one of the interviews a few months before assuming office back in October 2025, then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak called grooming/rape jihad a ‘horrific crime’ and vowed to tackle the problem as a priority if he was made Prime Minister.
Sunak had declared that he would form a new task force at the National Crime Agency that would focus on the problem of grooming gangs. “We will have a requirement for police forces everywhere to prioritise this. I want to make sure that all police forces record the ethnicity of those involved, which currently is not done because people don’t want to do that. I want to create a brand-new life sentence for those involved in grooming, with very limited options for parole. A Conservative government should not be letting political correctness stand in the way of keeping people safe,” Sunak said back then.
Sunak fulfilled his promise and, in April 2023, announced a new Grooming Gangs Taskforce to assist police forces in investigating the serious problem of Muslim grooming gangs in the country. In this task force, Sunak announced the appointment of specialist officers to assist in the investigation to ensure the criminals behind grooming gangs will be brought to justice. He also pledged to ensure the grooming gang members and the ring leaders get the toughest possible sentences for their crimes.
I will do whatever it takes to root out grooming gangs once and for all.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) April 3, 2023
Here's how 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZOLoMxippH
Sunak had also announced that his government will introduce legislation to bring the grooming gang leader a statutory aggravating factor during sentencing that would reflect the Government’s commitment towards ensuring the toughest sentences for the crimes.
Rishi Sunak had a vision and big plans for rooting out Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs once and for all. However, the Conservative Party’s drubbing in the general election dashed the UK’s hopes for an end to the grooming gang menace that still infects the country, and justice for the thousands of victims.
The Conservative Party’s 14 years in power ended with an electoral defeat due to public discontent with Tory governance on issues like the economy, cost of living, immigration, and post-Brexit challenges, compounded by internal party divisions. Though Rishi Sunak knew he was leading a sinking ship, the Conservative leader tried his best not to let political correctness and desperation to secure political gains hinder his pursuit of justice and safety for British girls from Pakistani Muslim rape gangs.
Though Keir Starmer got a lot more time in power and political stability than Rishi Sunak, Starmer failed to deliver on many fronts. Starmer’s flip-flops on ensuring justice for the victims of Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs will be remembered as one of his biggest failures as an elected representative of the British people.
