The liberal Left is collapsing under the weight of its intolerance

From grooming gangs to woke campuses, the liberal Left’s double standards are clear for all to see

Many liberals seem utterly baffled by the crises that have enveloped their creed over a decade or more. Yet the events of the past week provide them with the conclusive evidence that their problem is not – as they often like to tell themselves – Tory lies or media bias, but lies much closer to home, in their own beliefs and behaviour.

Last Tuesday, the country learnt of yet another grooming-gang scandal. After similar and harrowing tales from Oxford, Rochdale, Rotherham and other English towns and cities, we can now add Manchester to the list of places where the authorities watched mainly Asian men systematically abuse vulnerable white, working-class girls for years – and did nothing.

Already, it is clear that these new stories of appalling abuse will fall on deaf ears. Few want to address the issue that everybody knows is most pertinent: the abusers were, once again, mainly South Asian, Muslim men. Eighteen months ago, Sajid Javid, then Home Secretary, commissioned research into the characteristics of grooming gangs to understand what role cultural factors might play in the abuse. But last week, after a longrunning battle with the BBC, Home Office officials confirmed that they would not publish the report. They gave the standard lines – they wanted to avoid disclosing personal information, or disrupting ongoing investigations – but the true motives were obvious. As a senior police officer said of the Rotherham abuse, “with [the perpetrators] being Asians, we can’t afford for this to be coming out”.

With the Home Office silent, we must turn instead to research by one of its agencies. Child sex abusers are not disproportionately likely to be from any one racial or religious group, but according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, for gangs that target underage girls because of their vulnerability to exploitation – rather than because of sexual interest in children – 75 per cent of perpetrators are Asian.

And yet this knowledge does not make the authorities more alert to the danger: it appears to make them more nervous about confronting it. The inquiry into the Rotherham scandal concluded that the majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage, but the authorities were “inhibited by the fear of affecting community relations”. A Rotherham social worker reported: “If we mentioned Asian taxi drivers we were told we were racist … the young people were seen [by the authorities] as prostitutes.” And so liberal decision-makers – supposedly believers in universal rights and responsibilities – end up moral relativists, expecting less of some citizens and granting fewer protections to others.

Two days after the Manchester story broke, Equity, the actors’ trade union, called on its members to

“unequivocally denounce” Laurence Fox. Among other things, the actor had raised grooming gangs during an appearance on the BBC. His crime was to deny that criticism of Meghan Markle was racist, and to argue that fear of accusations of racism was a factor in the grooming-gang cases. Given the evidence accumulated in abuse inquiries to date, he was quite clearly correct. And yet the liberal-left reaction was to shout him down, attack his character and insult his “white privilege”.

This example of illiberal liberalism is not a one-off. Last week, the University of Sheffield confirmed it plans to pay students to police behaviour on campus, challenging perceived “microaggressions” deemed to be offensive. Examples of microaggressions provided by the university included students arguing that too many problems are “turned into a race issue”. Restricting free speech, it seems, is not enough: the university’s policy prevents discussion even about the parameters of acceptable speech.

Next up, Rebecca Long-bailey was attacked for her position on abortion. A practising Roman Catholic, the Labour leadership candidate had questioned whether women should have late-term abortions on the grounds that their babies were disabled. Denying any legitimacy to her argument, and ignoring that abortion has always been a conscience issue in Parliament, meaning MPS are not whipped to vote in any particular way, Long-bailey’s beliefs were attacked as “absolutely toxic”, and critics suggested her policies would be “dictated by the Vatican”. Of course, the liberal-left would never dream of using such language about other faiths, yet the logic of its position is that Catholics should never hold office.

But why is this happening? Why is liberalism – especially on the Left – becoming so illiberal and intolerant?

There has always been a split among liberals between those who value pluralism as the means by which we manage difference in complex societies, and those who value difference only as a means to truth, and with it an increasingly perfect society. These tensions go back to liberal thinkers like John Stuart Mill, but they are becoming more pronounced as left-liberals become more assertive.

If difference is only a means to truth, and reason is what leads us to truth, then those with whom liberals differ must be irrational. They represent institutions, norms, traditions and opinions – “prejudice!” – that must be overcome. Just think about how they talk about anybody who disagrees with their positions on almost anything, from immigration to transgender rights.

And if identity politics are what matters most – and for Lefties the old liberal dream of equal political rights is no longer enough – then immutable characteristics, such as race and sex, can be attacked, but only if you are attacking white men to compensate for their privilege.

This is how liberalism has become so confusing and contradictory. It is how it has grown increasingly illiberal, intolerant and – strangely for a supposedly universal theory – morally relativistic. For Left-liberals, the systematic sexual abuse of white, working-class girls by Asian men must be swept under the carpet, the Catholic beliefs of politicians must be suppressed, and the language of students must be monitored and restricted. Sure, it’s liberalism, but not as we once knew it.