Kemi Badenoch has come out in support of Robert Jenrick after the Shadow Justice Secretary suggested the Conservatives could seek to limit immigration from what he described as “alien cultures”. Jenrick stated this morning that “we have seen millions of people enter the UK in recent years and some of them have backward, frankly medieval attitudes to women”.
He stood by his claim that the grooming gang scandal “started with the onset of mass migration”. The Liberal Democrats called for Ms Badenoch to sack Mr Jenrick from his frontbench role over what they described as “divisive comments”.
However, a spokesman for the leader of the Conservative Party said: “Robert Jenrick did an excellent job this morning explaining the pressing need for a national inquiry into the rape gang scandal. The Liberal Democrats should spend less time worrying about tweets, and instead explain to the British people why they oppose an inquiry that would end the culture of cover-ups in our institutions and finally get justice for the victims.”
Ms Badenoch wrote in a piece for The Telegraph in September last year that “we need to demand that those who come here love this country and will maintain and uphold its traditions, not change them”. She said: “Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It’s also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not.”
Asked about Mr Jenrick’s comments, the Prime Minister’s spokesman suggested that they were a “distraction from the core issue” of protecting children from sexual abuse. Lord Tariq Ahmad, a Conservative peer, urged the Shadow Justice Secretary to “reflect” on some of his comments, warning they risked “inciting hatred” against particular communities.
