LONDON — Tory Chair Kevin Hollinrake on Wednesday stepped in to defend his colleague Robert Jenrick amid a controversy over comments Jenrick made about the absence of a “white face” in a Birmingham neighborhood.

Hollinrake told Times Radio that the comments were about integration, saying, “I think it does matter. I think people want to feel they live in integrated communities.”

The Tory chairman added, “I don’t think it matters the color of somebody’s skin, but I think it really matters where you’ve got cultural divides,” claiming it was “about people living parallel lives” which was a “great concern to me.” 

Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary widely tipped as a future Tory leader after losing to incumbent Kemi Badenoch last year, said in a recording leaked to The Guardian, “I went to Handsworth in Birmingham the other day to do a video on litter and it was absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.” 

He added: “It 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.” 

Speaking in March, the shadow justice secretary said, “I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated,” stressing “it’s not about the color of your skin or your faith, of course it isn’t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives.”

Badenoch defended Jenrick’s comments, arguing “I don’t think Birmingham is a model of integration,” and she was not interested “whether people use the perfect phrasing. I’m not dictating the words that need to come out of their mouths.”

But her Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride was more critical, telling the POLITICO Pub at Tory conference in Manchester on Tuesday: “Those are not words that I would have used.” 

Former Conservative Minister Edwina Currie told Times Radio that Jenrick’s comments were “hateful” and referenced Enoch Powell’s sacking as a Tory shadow minister after his “rivers of blood speech” in 1968 by then-leader Edward Heath.

“He said ‘that’s not who we are, we are not a racist party,’” Currie argued. “Invoking race and color in that way is not the Tory way.”