WHY are the media making headlines out of the words of Elon Musk? Yes, he is the world’s richest man and a sidekick of Donald Trump. Yes, he is the owner of the social-media platform once known as Twitter — which he has renamed X and nurtured as a forum for increasingly toxic political comment. But does any of that add credibility to the quality of his judgement?

Mr Musk has declared that Britain’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, is a “witch” and a “rape genocide apologist” who “deserves to be in prison”. He has accused Sir Keir Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain”.

Elon Musk is an ignorant man. He is clearly unaware that Ms Philips has, for decades, campaigned on behalf of victims of sexual violence and abuse. He seems not to know that, as Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir established a national network of specialist prosecutors to tackle grooming gangs — and overturned the idea that young victims would not make good witnesses.

But the febrile nature of Mr Musk’s language ought to have cast doubt upon his judgement in the minds of responsible journalists — language so distracted that it has caused his biographer, Seth Abramson, who has for two years tracked his “mental illness, heavy drug use, and crippling stress”, to fear that Mr Musk may actually “be going mad”.

Mr Musk’s supporters and those who wish to gain political advantage from jumping on the Musk bandwagon are undeterred. His language may be hysterical, but his basic point is correct, say prominent Conservatives, who are calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs — something that they did not see as a priority during the 14 years that they were government ministers.

There have been inquiries aplenty: Alexis Jay on Rotherham 2014; Louise Casey on Rotherham 2015; Newsam and Ridgway on Oldham in 2022, and on Rochdale in 2024. Most comprehensively, Professor Jay spent seven years chairing the £200- million Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which considered the cases of tens of thousands of victims and survivors — and made 20 key recommendations on changes needed to protect the vulnerable.

It is hard not to see in calls for yet another inquiry a subliminal appeal to voters whose legitimate concerns about illegal immigration can be tinged with fears of Islam — something all too easily fostered by the intemperate language of Conservative and Reform politicians about “Asian rape gangs”. According to Home Office research, published under a Conservative government, “group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white”. In the year to December 2022, some 83 per cent of prosecutions for child sex abuse were against white men.

Significantly, Professor Jay herself has spoken out against the calls for a new national inquiry, which, she says, has been politicised in a “very uninformed way”. What is needed, instead, is that the Government should get on with implementing her recommendations.

The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, made a start this week by announcing that it would soon be a crime to fail to report child abuse. The Government now needs to implement the rest of the Jay proposals — and the authorities must prosecute offences without fear or favour, whether by grooming gangs, or in care homes, or, indeed, in churches.