Britain”. Those on the right are particularly outraged that authorities’ fears of appearing racist or upsetting relations between groups in the affected communities were a central cause of the state’s failure to protect vulnerable children. The right’s obsession has itself produced a reaction from those on the “anti- racist”, progressive left, who have tended to play down the (undeniable) ethnic and religious element of these crimes. They accuse right-wing campaigners of cynically exploiting the grooming-gang scandal to stir up anti-Muslim hatred and advance their views that Pakistani or Muslim men are a profound threat to Western society. In the light of rising hate crimes against Muslims in Britain, such concerns are not unfounded. This heated row has long prevented a sensible conversation about how controversial factors—from honour culture to the role of misogyny in fundamentalist Islam—may have led to the overrepresentation of Pakistani men in these gangs. Into this maelstrom Rupert Lowe, leader of the far-right Restore Britain party, has thrown a shocking number. A post sharing his crowdfunded “Rape Gang Inquiry Report”, published last month, has received more than 51m views on X. Its estimate that at least 250,000 British girls have been abused by “predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs” quickly went viral and has since been repeated by influencers such as Tommy Robinson, a far-right agitator, and Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator. Dig into the report, however, and it becomes apparent that its central claim is ill-founded. The 250,000 figure was taken directly from an estimate by Malcolm Pearson, a former Tory and now independent peer who in 2018 told the House of Lords that “upwards of 250,000 young white girls” had been raped in Britain since the turn of the century—“very largely by Muslim men”. Lord Pearson’s office later explained to The Journal, an Irish newspaper, that his estimate was based on extrapolating from the documented abuses that happened in Rotherham (the official review estimated 1,400 victims over 16 years; Lord Pearson used a slightly higher estimate of 1,700), Telford (1,000 victims over 40 years) and Oxfordshire (373 victims over 16 years). Using rough population numbers to estimate rates of victimisation, he then applied
these rates nationally. Based on this he concludes that the number of victims across Britain since 2000 is between 162,000 and 440,000. The “250,000 victims of radical Muslim grooming gangs” estimate is offered simply as an almost-midway point. This methodology is obviously flawed. First, it assumes that rates of victimisation in areas with notoriously high levels of abuse are typical nationally. The 440,000 estimate assumes that all of Britain has the same rates as were found in Rotherham (the lower estimate of 162,000 comes from assuming that all of Britain is like Oxfordshire). Second, Lord Pearson erroneously uses the population of the city of Oxford when looking at victim figures for the wider county of Oxfordshire. Correcting that mistake produces a national estimate of fewer than 60,000 victims. Third, even if extrapolation were a fair method, the Rotherham, Telford and Oxfordshire estimates are based on a far broader definition of child sexual exploitation (counting all cases in which children were co-opted into performing sexual activities by a person with more power) than Mr Lowe’s much narrower definition of sexual exploitation by gangs of predominantly Asian men. Frustratingly, Britain lacks a reliable national estimate for the number of children abused by grooming gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani heritage. The nearest there is comes from a government estimate of 6,850 victims in Britain in 2015. That figure does refer specifically to victims of organised abuse (ie grooming gangs), but it includes perpetrators and victims of all ethnicities. Producing a more rigorous and specific national estimate is part of the task of a national inquiry launched by the Starmer government in December 2025. It will specifically examine the role of ethnicity, religion and culture as they relate to both the offenders and the institutions that failed to intervene. But it has yet to begin work in earnest and will take several years to report. When it does, the true scale of the scandal will no doubt still appal and shock the country. Meanwhile, the row between bad-faith commentators is set to continue. Instead of a careful and constructive debate, discussion is dominated by hysteria on the right and awkward silences on the left that only fuel perceptions of cover-up. Both are failing Britain. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/07/28/a-widely-repeated-statistic-is- shaping-britains-grooming-gangs-debate
Health tech and AI come to equestrianism A heritage sport is enjoying a data revolution, with animal welfare as the justification Jul 30th 2026 “He’s a proper diva,” a winning rider told Horse & Hound, an equine magazine, of his horse, Dowdstown Purple, at the Royal International Horse Show (rihs) in Hickstead, on England’s south coast. Horses have always been pampered, but they are increasingly treated on par with the most elite human athletes. On digital marketplaces owners advertise horses with elaborate video profiles and CVs of “notable achievements”. “Very genuine mare who loves to please,” reads one for a grey piebald. “No vices whatsoever.” Monitoring is the latest advancement. At the RIHS, Britain’s oldest horse show, which took place between July 21st and 26th, show jumpers swap tips
on tracking their steeds’ heart rates and sleep. Many favour Sleip, a Swedish app which uses AI to analyse a horse’s gait. The United Arab Emirates and Sweden may lead on developing such equine technology (the UAE has large stables and lots of money; Sweden has more horses than dairy cows), but Britons are its keenest consumers. Its equine health-care market is Europe’s largest by revenue, with software and related services, including wearable monitoring, the fastest-growing sub-sector. One reason for this British enthusiasm is welfare. A recent survey by YouGov, a pollster, for World Horse Welfare, a charity, found that 70% of Britons think a horse’s welfare should always take priority in sport, regardless of the impact on performance. In response to such concerns, the British Horseracing Authority, a regulator, has said it will trial Sleip’s technology at race meetings to ensure thoroughbreds stride safely. Another is that the tech is just as appealing to regular, ordinary riders, of which Britain has an estimated 1.8m. Equiyd, a British startup with a stall at Hickshead, promises “F1 thinking” for “equestrian performance”. Its app lets owners use their smartphone camera and wearable sensors to collect thousands of data points on gait, biomechanics and rider posture. Some 35,000 horses in 62 countries use it. Around 80% of its British users are amateur show jumpers, reckons David Lea, Equiyd’s co-founder, many with ordinary day jobs such as nurses and teachers, who use the app to save on coaching and vet bills. Some worry that too much tech will interfere with a rider’s natural “feel” for a horse. But its adoption in equestrianism shows no sign of slowing. Unlike a sprinter, a stallion is unlikely to object to being surveilled 24/7. And whereas regulation often hamstrings human-health tech, there are fewer barriers to “health-span maxxing” for horses. Soon, predicts Elin Hernlund, Sleip’s co-founder, horses could be “the most monitored athletes on the planet”.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/07/30/health-tech-and-ai-come-to- equestrianism
Britain is struggling to build data centres It risks missing a big opportunity Jul 30th 2026 East London’s neglected docklands have found a new life. In squat windowless buildings racks of computer servers purr in air-conditioning that sweaty local residents would kill for. These data centres were built a stone’s throw from Canary Wharf, a financial hub. Such proximity means superfast internet speeds, a crucial advantage in trading where a millisecond’s head- start can mint fortunes. The firms using these are often secretive; to enter Telehouse South, a new data centre, your correspondent passed through five layers of security. Some customers demand 12 separate checks, iris scans included. Server farms are not just niche tech for financiers. They have become vital for all: to stream television, run video games, and power chatbots and
artificial-intelligence tools. Demand is booming. “If we built six more facilities tomorrow,” says Julian Hennessy of Telehouse, “we would have customers to fill them.” Yet Britain has only a third as much data-centre capacity per person as America. By 2030 Britain hopes to have at least six gigawatts (GW) of capacity, up from 2GW now. America could reach over 90GW by then, up from 29GW today. Britain’s data-centre woes are depressingly familiar for British economists. Crippling industrial electricity prices (almost four times higher than in America) make the facilities expensive to run. Sclerotic planning rules and a long queue for connecting the centres to the electricity grid make them hard to build in the first place. Hugh Milward of Microsoft, a software giant, complains: “It can take 18 months to build a data centre but eight years to get a grid connection.” These delays are a serious liability in a world where the speed of building, as opposed to cost or location, is the decisive factor for impatient investors. The question for Britain and Europe generally is how much being a laggard behind America matters. As James Wise, chair of the government’s Sovereign AI unit, points out, “It’s not true that the only way to have more AI companies is to have more data centres.” The most compelling way for countries to achieve AI sovereignty is to have leverage that stops them from being prisoners in the race for AI supremacy. For Britain, this will never come from having an abundance of data centres, as it might for the Gulf states. But it can come from doubling down on the country’s strengths in research and a services sector well-placed to find lucrative uses for AI. If so, Britain could outsource most of its data-centre needs to places like Finland, which have cheaper electricity and more available land. Some geographic diversification would be wise—no single country should be able to hold Britain to ransom—but there would be no need for racks of servers to sully Albion’s shores. Although Britain’s data-centre struggles are not a death sentence, they are a worry. Uses where time is of the essence, like financial trading or self- driving cars, need servers nearby. Telehouse South can communicate with traders in Canary Wharf in less than a millisecond; using a New York server can take over 70 times as long. There are other uses, such as for national