1. Rother Valley Labour CLP has selected Dominic Beck as its candidate to contest the next general election. This thread will detail why his selection is a disgrace that shames everyone involved in it.
2. Beck has been a Labour councillor in Rotherham since 2011. He soon joined the cabinet. In 2014, a report found that at least 1,400 young girls in the town had been victims of sexual exploitation. The cabinet that Beck was on rejected the report. They clung on to power.
3. But in 2015, he was forced to resign along with the entire cabinet after an independent report uncovered the council’s incompetence in dealing with the town’s rape gangs scandal.
4. There’s Beck, bottom right, on the front page of the Times after the report was published. The council, with Beck in the cabinet, rejected the newspaper’s investigation as lies by “the Murdoch press.”
5. Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, celebrated Beck’s appointment, but seems to forget that he resigned in disgrace after being implicated in the town’s CSE scandal. He had been a councillor for four years before the report found the council was “unfit for purpose.” Weird.
6. Beck has never spoken about the scandal. He has never apologised. No contrition, just silence. When South Yorkshire PCC Shaun Wright was pressured to resign after the scandal broke, Beck was accused of trying to move the agenda away from the situation in council meetings.
7. At parish council meetings, Beck phoned police on angry locals who turned up to question senior councillors. youtu.be
8. If Labour is serious about tackling grooming gangs, it would have NEVER allowed the selection of a local politician who was implicated in Rotherham council’s evil incompetence. They looked the other way while thousands were raped and tortured. It is inexcusable.
9. My contacts in Rotherham are absolutely stunned by Beck’s selection. One local campaigner told me it was “shameful and shocking”, adding that it confirmed Rotherham’s “cover-up culture of silence.”
10. The good people of Rotherham — who have been made to endure years of lies — deserve so much better. After decades of abuse and cover-ups, can Labour not find ONE local politician who has not been implicated in the rape gangs scandal?
ENDS
ENDS
Loading suggestions...