At a Conservative dinner, Jenrick had complained of not seeing another white face in the neighbourhood of Handsworth and said it was not the kind of country he wanted to live in due to a lack of integration \u2013 before saying it was not about skin colour or faith.<\/p>\n
David Lammy, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, suggested Jenrick was judging people based on the colour of their skin, while Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, broke ranks by saying the remarks were \u201cnot words that I would have used\u201d. Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, said it was racism.<\/p>\n
![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759858029_851_4096.jpg\")
Robert Jenrick complains of \u2018not seeing another white face\u2019 during Birmingham visit \u2013 audio<\/p>\n
The Right Rev Dr Michael Volland, the bishop of Birmingham, said the comments \u201chave the potential to generate anxiety and stir up division and \u2026 can feed into a harmful narrative that provides fuel for a fire of toxic nationalism\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andy Street, the Conservative former mayor of the West Midlands, said Jenrick was wrong in saying the multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Handsworth was not integrated, while Labour\u2019s Richard Parker, who succeeded Street as mayor, said he was \u201cincredibly sad but also very angry\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBirmingham is a proud, diverse city built by generations from every background. We don\u2019t separate people by the colour of their skin \u2013 and that\u2019s what Jenrick has done here with his comments,\u201d Parker said. \u201cWhat also concerns me is that there were Conservative politicians in that room, from our region, and they didn\u2019t speak up. Silence in the face of this kind of rhetoric is not leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenrick was repeatedly pressed over the comments on the day of his speech to the Conservative party conference.<\/p>\n
In the remarks in March, Jenrick was recorded as saying: \u201cI went to Handsworth in Birmingham the other day to do a video on litter and it was absolutely appalling. It\u2019s as close as I\u2019ve come to a slum in this country. But the other thing I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places I\u2019ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour and a half I was filming news there I didn\u2019t see another white face.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. It\u2019s not about the colour of your skin or your faith \u2013 of course it isn\u2019t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives. That\u2019s not the right way we want to live as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday he repeatedly told interviewers that he stood by the comments and did not resile from them as it would be wrong to \u201cshut down an important debate that we have to have as a country\u201d about integration.<\/p>\n
When a Sky News journalist put it to him that his remarks could embolden far-right groups who did not want to see black and brown people living in the UK, Jenrick said it was \u201can absolutely disgraceful and ridiculous\u201d question and accused the journalist of trying to silence debate about integration, which he said in itself could fuel extremism.<\/p>\n
In an interview for the Telegraph\u2019s Daily T podcast, Jenrick was pressed on whether he would complain that an all-white area was too monocultural, if he really was making a point about how society should be integrated and reflect the makeup of the country.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Jenrick replied: \u201cThe left do. Decolonise the countryside, decolonise the National Trust. The left do make those arguments \u2026 What I said is that it\u2019s not about the colour of your skin or your faith. My point is that we have communities that do not reflect the breadth of the people who live in our country. That is self-evidently true.\u201d<\/p>\n Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, defended Jenrick, saying he had made a \u201cfactual statement\u201d and that there was \u201cnothing wrong with making observations\u201d. But she also told BBC Breakfast: \u201cI don\u2019t think this is where the debate should be, about how many faces people see on the street and what they look like.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenrick\u2019s comments about Handsworth related to a video about litter and fly-tipping that he recorded for GB News. In the footage, he talks about being in Handsworth but is actually pictured walking down a street in nearby Aston. There are no interviews with any local people. A clip of flytipping in Aston put on Facebook by a Liberal Democrat councillor, Mumtaz Hussain, is also shown. Jenrick later went to interview residents in the Conservative area of Sutton Coldfield about flytipping.<\/p>\n Responding to Jenrick on Tuesday, Lammy said: \u201cUnlike Robert Jenrick, the public knows Britishness isn\u2019t about retreating into suspicion or judging people by the colour of their skin. It\u2019s about pride in what we build and contribute together. While the Conservative party feeds off division and decline, Labour is delivering the patriotic renewal our country needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, told LBC that Jenrick \u201chas a lot of explaining to do\u201d. She asked: \u201cIs he suggesting that the colour of your skin makes you less British than someone else?\u201d<\/p>\n Polanski, the Green party leader, went further, saying: \u201cJenrick could have visited Handsworth to listen to residents; he chose to pass through and judge them based on the colour of their skin. Instead of getting to know our nation of neighbours, he chose racism. The Tories, Reform and Labour want to divide us. The Greens say: enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Jenrick has been accused of fuelling a \u201cfire of toxic nationalism\u201d after he doubled down on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-183640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}