UK Independence Party (UKIP) MEP Nigel Farage has slammed London Mayor Sadiq Khan for not addressing extremism in Muslim communities and criticised Theresa May’s tenure as home secretary, saying that the prime minister’s words are not enough and people want action.
On Fox and Friends Weekend, the Brexit campaigner criticised Mr. Khan for telling Londoners “not to be alarmed” saying:
“I understand the mayor wishing to not spread panic but what I would like to hear is him say: ‘As the first Muslim mayor of London, I am going to do all I can to work with the Muslim community to drive out the extremist preachers from our mosques. To do all we can to stop radicalisation happening in schools and in prisons.’
“And I did not hear a single word of that,” the former UKIP party leader said.
Asked whether he concurred with U.S. President Donald Trump’s assessment that political correctness was a contributing problem to the fight against Islamic terrorism, Mr. Farage pointed to the child sex abuse scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale, saying:
“We can talk about terrorism but equally please don’t forget what happened to all those young underaged girls in our big northern cities, molested, raped, on an industrial scale and yet we did nothing about it for fear of causing offence.
“For fear of the thought of being considered racists with a particular part of the Muslim community.
“So I’m afraid we’ve been absolutely hidebound in this country by political correctness.
“I’m afraid that one of those people who simply hasn’t done enough is Theresa May. She was the one who was for six years our home secretary. She was in charge of homeland security.
“Today she stood on the steps of Downing Street and said: ‘Enough is enough‘.
Well, I hope she actually means it.”
The Rotherham child sex abuse scandal is the biggest child protection scandal in Britain’s history. Since the late 1980s, police and social services failed to protect girls from predatory grooming gangs made up of Muslim men for fear of being labelled racist, leading to institutional cover-ups.
Other Muslim grooming networks, including in Sheffield and Rochdale, have also been exposed since the first convictions in Rotherham in 2010.
However, police officers in the past week have said they are investigating almost 200 cases of child sex abuse in Keighley, prompting fears of a ‘new Rochdale’ grooming gang in the small Yorkshire town.
Asked whether he thought a solution to the terror threat would be to place the over 3,000 subjects currently on a top surveillance list in internment camps, Mr. Farage said he did not agree with internment, referencing the detention of suspected IRA terrorists 30 years ago which “led to more recruits for the IRA”, but acknowledged calls for it have been made.
“What I said was that the calls for internment will grow stronger. For the prime minister just to say ‘enough is enough’ that is not going to satisfy people – people want action.”
Following the Manchester attack, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall has said he “wouldn’t take anything off the table” when considering how to deal with the Islamist threat including internment.