Why is the BBC proving so reluctant to report on the horrific story of the 1000 young girls who, over a period of 40 years, have been groomed, drugged, serially raped and sometimes murdered by predominantly Muslim gangs in Telford, Shropshire?

Nick Ferrari accused the BBC of ignoring the Telford abuse scandal because it does not fit their agenda. https://t.co/Xi5NiLy3pm — LBC (@LBC) March 12, 2018

Possibly for the same reason that so much of the UK media is now giving such prominence to the poisoning of Russian ex-double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, presumably on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

I’m certainly not suggesting that this attempted assassination by agents of a foreign power on British soil isn’t a disgrace; nor that Britain shouldn’t retaliate – perhaps even, as is being suggested, by boycotting the World Cup – in which England were due to play in Russia this summer.

What I am saying is that where stories to do with Islam are concerned, there appears to be an appetite among large sections of Britain’s political and media class to move them down the news agenda as quickly as possible.

I suppose the most glaringly offensive example of this is the disparity between the coverage of the Islamist suicide bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Both happened last year, yet while the latter incident is still being rehearsed by politicians and the media at every turn, the former has been virtually airbrushed from history. While it’s true that the death toll at Grenfell was higher, I still fail to see how a terrorist attack in which 22 people were killed – most of them little girls – and another 59 mutilated can have been allowed to drop off the radar with quite such indecent haste.

Increasingly, I feel, there is a gulf between what ordinary people believe to be of greatest public concern – say: little girls being targeted and blown to bits; little girls being systematically groomed and raped on an industrial scale – and what the media and political class are telling them should be of most concern.

Here is a classic example of this, courtesy of the dismally right-on Caroline Lucas MP (the only Green MP in Britain’s parliament – and long may this remain the case!). The man putting her back in her box is the great Andrew Neil, just about the only BBC political presenter to question the narrative of the liberal elite, which is consequently about the only BBC political presenter that anyone in the real world takes seriously…

Pleased that my Urgent Question on bullying and harassment in House of Commons has been granted. I'd ask MPs please to ensure that their focus is on those affected. This is not about settling old political scores. — Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) March 12, 2018

Wouldn’t the appalling sexual abuse and exploitation, including rape and terrible violence, in Telford involving hundreds of vulnerable young women over a long period, as impressively revealed by the Mirror, be a more appropriate use of an Urgent Question. https://t.co/smgHyfT8RB — Andrew Neil (@afneil) March 12, 2018

Yup. You’d think…