Starmer says Jenrick is ‘hard to take seriously’ after Birmingham comments

Keir Starmer has criticised Robert Jenrick’s comments complaining about “not seeing another white face” in parts of Birmingham, saying the shadow justice secretary was “hard to take seriously”.

The prime minister suggested Jenrick’s comments were part of a stealth Conservative leadership campaign and said he did not believe he painted a true picture of the area of Handsworth, which Jenrick had described as “as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country”.

Jenrick has been accused of fuelling a “fire of toxic nationalism” after he doubled down on his complaint despite criticism including from the former Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street.

At a Conservative dinner recorded in March, 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 – before saying it was not about skin colour or faith.

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Asked about the remarks while en route to India, Starmer said: “It’s quite hard to take anything that Robert Jenrick says seriously; he’s clearly still running his leadership campaign.”

Starmer, who did not directly engage with the comments, said he had agreed with Street’s criticisms of the shadow justice secretary. Street had told BBC Newsnight the comments were “wrong” and described Handsworth as a “very integrated place”.

“I think that what Andy Street said was right,” the prime minister said. “Andy Street obviously was mayor for a long time and knows the area very very well.

“We’re working hard on questions of integration but we need no lessons or lectures from Robert Jenrick on any of this. He’s clearly just engaging in a leadership campaign.”

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, defended Jenrick, saying he had made a “factual statement” and that there was “nothing wrong with making observations”.

But she also told BBC Breakfast: “I don’t think this is where the debate should be, about how many faces people see on the street and what they look like.”

Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, became the first senior Tory to distance himself from Jenrick over the comments, telling a Politico fringe event at the Conservative party conference that they were “not words that I would have used”.

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Jenrick repeatedly told interviewers at the conference on Tuesday that he stood by the comments and did not resile from them as it would be wrong to “shut down an important debate that we have to have as a country” about integration.

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 an “absolutely disgraceful and ridiculous” question.

In his original remarks, Jenrick said Handsworth was “one of the worst integrated places I’ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour and a half I was filming news there I didn’t see another white face.

“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. It’s not about the colour of your skin or your faith – of course it isn’t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives. That’s not the right way we want to live as a country.”