Tory MPs contact Badenoch to raise concerns about Jenrick’s comments
Conservative MPs have privately raised concerns about Robert Jenrick’s comments about British Pakistanis with the party leader, Kemi Badenoch.Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has been accused of stoking community divisions to fuel his own leadership ambitions with his remarks about “people from alien cultures”.A Tory MP told the Guardian that colleagues had made representations to Badenoch about Jenrick’s language, which has drawn criticism from community groups.The Liberal Democrats said the Conservative leader 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 challenged repeatedly on Tuesday morning for having failed to act on the outcome of an inquiry into rape gangs while he was in the Home Office, despite now demanding one, and for rarely mentioning the issue in the Commons until this year.
Badenoch had previously defended the shadow justice secretary’s right to make the comments, which have caused private disquiet among some Conservative MPs,One senior Conservative MP and Badenoch leadership supporter said: “Many in the Conservative party are worried that Jenrick is using the issue of grooming gangs for his own leadership ambitions,Painting a whole culture as alien is nothing short of xenophobic, and undermines the important issue of achieving justice for those poor girls who were let down by so many,“He is busying toxifying the Conservative brand while [the Reform party leader] Nigel Farage is looking like the reasonable one,All because Kemi has failed to rein him in.
”One former Conservative colleague of Jenrick said he was “poisoning the discourse which could damage a very pertinent and important cause”.Another Tory MP described Jenrick’s morning interviews as a disgrace.However, a number of current Tory MPs said they agreed with Jenrick, saying he was “doing his job” by talking about perceived failures of integration.On Tuesday, Jenrick said he was right to say there had been a failure of integration.“What I have said is that millions of people have come into our country in recent times, but some of them are coming from countries and cultures that have backwards attitudes to women,” Jenrick told Times Radio.
“And that’s backed up by the evidence that we have seen from the Jay report [into child sexual exploitation] and the testimonies of the victims,“Pakistani men are over-represented in those who are involved in the grooming gangs, and the evidence we have seen is that some of those have specifically preyed upon white, working-class girls because they viewed them as worthless,”Prof Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse did not conclusively find there was an over-representation of Pakistani men, saying a lack of data meant it was “impossible to know whether any particular ethnic group is over-represented as perpetrators of child sexual exploitation by networks”,The Lib Dem deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, said: “Robert Jenrick’s attempt to exploit this appalling scandal for his own political gain is completely shameless,He didn’t lift a finger to help the victims when a minister, now he’s jumping on the bandwagon and acting like a pound-shop Farage.
“Kemi Badenoch should sack him as shadow justice secretary and condemn his divisive comments, instead of letting him run a leadership campaign under her nose.”Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotionA number of high-profile human rights campaigners also condemned Jenrick.The Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti said: “Robert Jenrick isn’t blowing a dog whistle but sounding a fog horn with his explosive mixture of race politics and sex abuse.Jenrick would have more credibility if he had any history of standing up against the abuse of women and girls or acting on the Jay report when in government.”Shaista Gohir, the chief executive of Muslim Women’s Network UK, said: “Robert Jenrick’s views are against the very British values he claims to uphold.
Given the popularity of the Reform party, it appears he is desperately trying to shamelessly bring attention to himself to gain enough support to become politically relevant again so he can become the next leader of the Conservative party.”Nazir Afzal, the former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England who authorised the charging of the Rochdale gang, said: “To label an entire group as an ‘alien culture’ is to ignore the centuries of shared history, values, and contributions that we have made to the fabric of the United Kingdom.It is not culture that is foreign, but the ignorance that seeks to divide us.”Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Jenrick was challenged on whether he was saying that Britain should bar immigration from certain countries.“I think that it is very difficult to successfully integrate the very large numbers of people who we have had coming into our country in recent years.
We should be open about that,” he said.Asked if he was speaking specifically about Pakistan when he described a “medieval attitude to women”, he said: “I think some people who come from that country do.I’m not saying everybody.”He added: “I’ve always said that point, made by Kemi Badenoch, the leader of my party, that not all cultures are equal.We should be very careful about who is coming into this country and the scale of immigration.
”Jenrick said he would not modify his language, in response to criticism by Boris Johnson’s former adviser on communities and civil society, Samuel Kasamu, who called Jenrick’s comments highly divisive and added that they risked people getting killed.“This is about young girls being systematically raped for decades, and you’re asking me about disguising my language so as not to offend people.I’m not going to tiptoe around this issue,” Jenrick said.
Don’t panic – despite the headlines, the Australian dollar isn’t crashing | Greg Jericho
As I returned to work after the Christmas holidays, I checked in on how the economy was going and was rather startled to read the headline “Panic as Aussie dollar crashes to five-year low”. Cripes. So much for easing into the year.It wasn’t even a week in and already I was wondering if I needed to rush to the shops and buy up all the canned goods on offer. But, as is often the case with economics and news headlines, things are not as grim as they might seem
Shein’s silence is farcical. It must answer fair questions if it wants a London listing | Nils Pratley
It is “not unusual” for UK-listed companies to carry legal risks around the world, Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, told the FT last month. The boss of the regulatory body that ultimately decides which companies can list their shares in London added: “What’s important is that they disclose it, the investors understand it and they can price that risk.”Rathi’s remarks were inevitably read as aimed at Shein, the Chinese-founded but Singapore-headquartered fast-fashion retailer whose possible listing in London has been a running story since the company filed preliminary paperwork seven months ago.That interpretation looked correct. Whereas US lawmakers bombarded Shein with hostile questions about its supply-chain practices in China to the point where the company abandoned hope of listing in New York, the early reception in the UK has been constructive
Meta’s factchecking partners brace for layoffs
Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end factchecking on Facebook and Instagram in the US already has factchecking journalists bracing for cuts at their organizations, given the size of Meta’s funding.The social media giant has provided more than $100m for outside organizations certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to conduct factchecks on its social networks since 2016, which would result in posts receiving accuracy ratings and having their reach reduced if false. Major outlets like USA Today and Reuters have partnered with the social media company for these factchecks, as have factcheck specific sites like FactCheck.org. In all, 10 outlets are listed by Meta as current partners in the US
AI-generated ‘slop’ is slowly killing the internet, so why is nobody trying to stop it? | Arwa Mahdawi
How do you do, fellow humans? My name is Arwa and I am a genuine member of the species homo sapiens. We’re talking a 100% flesh-and-blood person operating in meatspace over here; I am absolutely not an AI-powered bot. I know, I know. That’s exactly what a bot would say, isn’t it? I guess you’re just going to have to trust me on this.I’m taking great pains to point this out, by the way, because content created by real life human beings is becoming something of a novelty these days
‘Anyone can pickleball’: boom sport a hit over rugby ahead of Australian Open debut | Jack Snape
It has been hyped up by the likes of Nick Kyrgios, Patty Mills and Adam Scott, and few social media feeds are safe from an influencer picking up a paddle. Pickleball will now make its Australian Open debut in a milestone that marks the fledgling sport’s legitimacy, as participation booms and professional opportunities mature.The format that resembles mini-tennis with paddles and plastic, hollow balls has now overtaken rugby union, baseball and billiards in participation in Australia. With popularity soaring, local pickleballers are lobbying the government for official status to help with funding for court shortages and integrity measures to police burgeoning elite competitions.Tennis Australia’s head of game expansion, Callum Beale, says the Australian Open has included accessible paddle formats like padel and pop tennis in recent years to expand the appeal of the broad tennis category, but this year’s first pickleball slam is a “symbolic” moment
World Anti-Doping Agency faces crisis after US government withholds funding
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is facing a crisis after the US government defaulted on a $3.6m contribution to the global sport watchdog’s annual budget.Wada said the US had missed the 31 December 2024 deadline for payment and retaliated by saying representatives from the US would now be ineligible to sit on its foundation board or executive committee.The funding breakdown comes after a year of sniping between Wada and the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), which started when it was revealed last year that Wada had cleared 23 Chinese swimmers to compete at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, even though they had tested positive for banned heart drug trimetazidine (TMZ). Wada accepted the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency reasoning that a kitchen at a team hotel could have contaminated all 23 samples
UK Athletics charged with manslaughter over Paralympian’s death
Baltimore Orioles announce death of ‘cherished teammate’ Brian Matusz at age of 37
England’s Feyi-Waboso in dilemma over surgery for sake of Lions ambitions
Peter Hain urges South Africa to protest Afghanistan game at Champions Trophy
The Spin | ‘Deep, minging, unpleasant’: cricket’s flooding problem is getting worse
Can the New York Rangers be saved? Maybe not this current version