Senior Tory Robert Jenrick has been accused of stirring up division as he defended comments about not seeing “another white face” while visiting an area of Birmingham, insisting it “did look like a slum”.
In a race row that overshadowed his Tory conference speech – in which he attacked judges, accusing them of “fighting to keep illegal migrants in the UK” – the shadow justice secretary defended his remarks on what he claims is a lack of integration in some parts of Britain.
He insisted he “won’t shy away” from such issues and said his comments, reportedly made during a visit to Handsworth in March, were simply an “observation”.
Party leader Kemi Badenoch defended her former leadership rival, insisting there was “nothing wrong” with what he said.
But local leaders condemned his comments as divisive and “entirely wrong”.
It comes as Tory grandee Michael Heseltine warned Ms Badenoch the party’s attacks on migrants are “not the Conservative way to rebuild power”.
In a damning attack on her leadership, the former deputy prime minister used a speech at the conference in Manchester to blast the rhetoric of the current leadership, warning that the inflammatory language “encourages the worst sort of prejudice”.
Lord Heseltine warned that instead of aping Reform UK, the Tories “must make clear that we will never have any part in the populist extremism of Nigel Farage”.
Defending his comments on The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday, Mr Jenrick said there are “pockets” of towns and cities that are largely segregated and people should not be stopped from talking about it out of a "misplaced fear of being called racist".
He said: "It did look like a slum”, adding: "I didn't see a mix of people on the streets. It was an observation."
Asked if Mr Jenrick's comments were racist, Richard Parker, the Labour mayor of the West Midlands, replied: "I do. Because he’s set out intentionally to draw on a particular issue - people’s colour - to identify the point he wanted to make."
“No other politician that I know in the West Midlands of a mainstream party would seek to do that explicitly and with the intent that he did,” he told BBC Radio WM.
The Bishop of Birmingham, Right Reverend Michael Volland, branded the remarks “entirely wrong” and said he had been dismayed and disappointed to hear them.
In a letter to Mr Jenrick he said: “Comments like those you have made have the potential to generate anxiety and stir up division. They can feed into a harmful narrative that provides fuel for a fire of toxic nationalism.
“It is deeply unhelpful for politicians to make such comments and I encourage you to think about how your rhetoric might contribute towards unity rather than stoking division.”
And shadow cabinet colleagues of Mr Jenrick have warned that he has gone too far with his latest comments. One said: “I spoke to a party donor who told me ‘Robert is going to burst with ambition, I have told him he needs to wind his neck in a bit and get on with fighting Labour.’”
Another said: “The thing is we would all like the real Robert Jenrick to show himself. When it suited him he was a centrist and now we have this very rightwing act. People just don’t think it is authentic. If he had been authentic he might have won the leadership contest last year.”
Labour Party chair Anna Turley criticised Mr Jenrick for judging “his own level of comfort by whether there are other white faces around”.
The MP for Redcar said: “This weekend, Kemi Badenoch said she stood against a politics that ‘reduces people to categories and then pits them against each other’.
“People of colour should not have to justify their Englishness or their Britishness, or their presence in this country to Robert Jenrick or anyone else.”
Asked about his remarks on Tuesday, Ms Badenoch said: “In and of itself, it’s a factual statement. If he said he didn’t see another white face, he might have been making an observation. There’s nothing wrong with making observations.
“I wasn’t there, so I can’t say how many faces he saw, but the point is that there are many people in our country who are not integrating. I heard that one of the MPs of that area was accusing him of racism. I completely disagree with that. I want to make that very clear.”
The criticism came as Mr Jenrick used his Tory party speech to launch an unprecedented assault on Britain’s judiciary, vowing to scrap the independent sentencing council and sack dozens of judges he accused of “open borders activism”.
Brandishing a judge’s wig, he said tens of judges have spent their careers “fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country”, adding that “some even continue to do so, whilst, astonishingly, serving as judges”.
“They dishonour generations of independent jurists who came before them, and they undermine the people’s trust in the law itself,” he said, adding that “judges who blur the line between adjudication and activism can have no place in our justice system”.
