Tory insiders fear Robert Jenrick is stoking division to fuel his leadership ambitions | Conservatives

Conservatives have privately accused Robert Jenrick of stoking divisions to fuel his own leadership ambitions, as community groups condemned the shadow justice secretary for describing British people of Pakistani origin as “people from culturally foreign”.

The Liberal Democrats said Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch should sack Jenrick after he stood by his claim that mass migration meant the UK had imported hundreds of thousands of people who “possess medieval attitudes towards women “.

Jenrick was questioned several times on Tuesday morning for failing to follow up on the results of an investigation into rapist gangs while he was at the Interior Ministry, when he now demanded one, and for having rarely mentioned the issue in the House of Commons until this year.

Badenoch previously defended the shadow justice secretary’s right to make the comments, which caused private concern among some Tory MPs.

A senior Tory MP and supporter of Badenoch’s leadership said: “Many in the Conservative Party fear that Jenrick is using the issue of gang grooming for his own leadership ambitions. Describing an entire culture as foreign is simply xenophobic and undermines the important issue of getting justice for these poor girls who have been abandoned by so many.

“He is working to toxify the Tory brand while (Reform Party leader) Nigel Farage looks like a reasonable man. All because Kemi failed to master it.

A former Conservative colleague of Jenrick said he was “poisoning the discourse, which could harm a very relevant and important cause”. Another Tory MP called Jenrick’s morning talks a disgrace.

However, a number of current Conservative MPs said they agreed with Jenrick, saying he was “doing his job” by speaking out about perceived failures on integration.

On Tuesday, Jenrick insisted he was right that there had been a failure of integration. “What I said is that millions of people have arrived in our country in recent times, but some of them come from countries and cultures that have a backward attitude towards women,” Jenrick told Times Radio. “And this is supported by the evidence we saw in the Jay report (on child sexual exploitation) and the testimonies of victims.

“Pakistani men are over-represented among those involved in grooming gangs, and the evidence we saw is that some of them specifically preyed on white, working-class girls because they considered them as worthless. »

Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse did not conclusively find an over-representation of Pakistani men, saying a lack of data meant it was “impossible to know whether any particular ethnic group is overrepresented as perpetrators of child sexual exploitation. through networks”.

Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “Robert Jenrick’s attempt to exploit this appalling scandal for his own political gain is completely brazen. He didn’t lift a finger to help the victims when he was a minister, now he’s jumping on the bandwagon and behaving like a delivery boy Farage.

“Kemi Badenoch should sack him as shadow justice secretary and condemn his divisive comments, instead of letting him run a leadership campaign under his nose.”

A number of prominent human rights activists have also condemned Jenrick.
Labor colleague Shami Chakrabarti said: “Robert Jenrick is not dog whistling but blowing a foghorn with his explosive mix of racial politics and sexual abuse. Jenrick would have more credibility if he had previously tackled abuse of women and girls or followed up on the Jay report while in government.

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Baroness Shaista Gohir, chief executive of the UK Muslim Women’s Network, said: “Robert Jenrick’s views go against the British values ​​he claims to uphold. Given the popularity of the Reform Party, it appears that he is desperately and shamelessly trying to attract attention to himself in order to gain enough support to become politically relevant again and become the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Nazir Afzal, the former chief prosecutor in the north-west of England who authorized the indictment of the Rochdale gang, said: “To call an entire group a ‘foreign culture’ is to ignore centuries of shared history, values ​​and contributions which have made the fabric of the United Kingdom. It is not culture that is foreign, but ignorance that seeks to divide us. »

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Jenrick was asked whether he was saying Britain should ban immigration from certain countries. “I think it is very difficult to successfully integrate the very large number of people who have arrived in our country in recent years. We should be open about it,” he said.

Asked if he was talking specifically about Pakistan when he described a “medieval attitude towards women”, he replied: “I think some people who come from that country do that. I don’t tell everyone.

He added: “I have always said, as Kemi Badenoch, the leader of my party, pointed out, that not all cultures are equal. We need to be very careful about who comes to this country and how much immigration there is.

Jenrick said he would not change his language, in response to criticism from Boris Johnson’s former adviser on communities and civil society, Samuel Kasamu, who described Jenrick’s comments as highly controversial and added that they risked killing people.

“These are young girls who have been systematically raped for decades, and you are asking me to disguise my language so as not to offend people. I’m not going to tiptoe around this,” Jenrick said.