Emily Maitlis labelled Rupert Lowe a ‘racist’ during an interview with the former Reform UK MP.
Lowe featured on the latest episode of the News Agents podcast, following the news that the Metropolitan Police had decided to drop its investigation into allegations of “verbal threats” from Lowe towards Reform party chairman Zia Yusuf.
During the interview, Maitlis asked Lowe why he was “politicising child exploitation” with his crowdfunded ‘rape gang inquiry.’
Lowe said he only ever refers to child grooming gangs as “Pakistani rape gangs” because “95% of these people are Pakistani.”
Maitlis immediately pulled Lowe up on the comment, telling him his stat was “absolutely not true.” She went on to quote police figures from 2023 which state 224 white grooming gang suspects were found compared to 22 Pakistani suspects.
Maitlis asked Lowe why he only focuses on Pakistani grooming gangs when there are far more white suspects.
After Lowe defended his inquiry into the gangs – and completely ignored the police stats quoted to him – Maitlis accused him of being a “racist” for focusing solely on Pakistani suspects.
When Lowe asked her “are you telling me there’s no issue”, she hit back: “I’m telling you that you are focusing on Pakistani grooming gangs because probably, you’re racist and you don’t believe that there are white perpetrators of the same crime.”
You can watch the exchange below.
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