Badenoch defends Jenrick’s ‘no white faces’ comments about Birmingham
Tory leader says ‘nothing wrong with making observations’, after Jenrick said Handsworth was ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country’
Kemi Badenoch has defended her colleague Robert Jenrick over his complaint about not seeing “another white face” in a part of Birmingham but said the debate should not be about what people look like in the streets.
The Conservative leader said the shadow justice secretary had made a “factual statement” and 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.”