The Untouchables: Power, Abuse and the War for Narrative in Modern Britain
In Britain today, the question is no longer just what happened, but who is allowed to speak about it, and what happens to them when they do. Nowhere is this clearer than in the grotesque contrast between two men who, in different ways, stood at the heart of national scandal: Jimmy Savile and Tommy Robinson.
They could not be more different.
One was a media darling, a knight of the realm, feted for charity and television stunts while secretly abusing children on an industrial scale. The other is a working-class firebrand, convicted of offences, reviled by media and political elites for his angry crusade against Muslim grooming gangs.
And yet—when viewed through the lens of institutional response—we discover something startling:
The system protected the abuser and destroyed the exposer.
This is the story of The Untouchables.
Not just those who act with impunity, but those who are rendered unspeakable—because they threaten the illusion that power is benevolent, inclusive, and just.
Savile: The Sanctified Predator
Jimmy Savile was not just a celebrity. He was a cultural artefact—an eccentric fixture of British life, immune to scrutiny, trusted implicitly by institutions that should have known better.
Hospitals gave him keys. The BBC gave him airtime. The monarchy gave him honours.
Whispers of his abuse followed him for decades. Victims came forward, were ignored or silenced. Even after his death, initial attempts to expose the truth were pulled by the BBC itself, in one of the clearest institutional cover-ups in modern British media.
He was, in every sense, untouchable.
Robinson: The Forbidden Accuser
Tommy Robinson’s flaws are numerous and well-documented. He is not polished, not respectful, not strategic. He is sometimes his own worst enemy. But when he began highlighting the industrial-scale abuse of vulnerable white working-class girls by grooming gangs—primarily of Pakistani Muslim origin—he said something that the institutions refused to say.
He forced open a wound the country was desperate to deny.
And for that, he became not untouchable, but unmentionable.
Convicted. Deplatformed. Imprisoned. Vilified.
Not because he lied—but because he told a truth the wrong way, or perhaps because he told it at all.
The Inversion of Virtue
The BBC protected Savile because he fit their myth.
They condemned Robinson because he broke it.
This is not about agreeing with Robinson’s methods or ignoring his flaws. It is about asking:
Why did it take someone like him to speak truths that institutions had buried for decades?
And why was he destroyed, while Savile was decorated?
Narrative as Power
We live in an age where narrative is a form of law.
To be on the right side of the story is to be safe—even if you harm others.
To be on the wrong side is to be obliterated—even if you tell the truth.
The Savile scandal was not just about abuse. It was about a culture of institutional self-protection.
The Robinson saga is not just about controversy. It’s about what happens when someone confronts power without a licence to speak.
The Mythic Layer: Sacred and Profane
At a deeper level, this is mythic theatre—ancient and brutal. Every society creates roles for:
- The priest, who sanctifies the system;
- The scapegoat, who bears the guilt of others;
- The prophet, who names the corruption and is exiled for it.
Savile was the corrupted priest—unclean but protected, allowed to defile sacred spaces because he served the story.
Robinson is the mad prophet—coarse, inconvenient, dangerous—because he speaks what cannot be said without collapsing the illusion.
In this myth, the temple must remain pure.
If that requires silencing victims or exiling those who expose them, so be it.
The sacrifice is the price of the ritual.
Conclusion: The Real Scandal
The real scandal is not just that Savile got away with it.
Or that Robinson became the vessel for a truth too ugly to be uttered in polite company.
The real scandal is that Britain’s moral order has become a theatre, where appearance matters more than reality, and where the only unforgivable crime is disrupting the narrative.
Until we can speak honestly about that, the untouchables will remain untouched, and the unmentionables will keep paying the price for saying what everyone already knows.