Robert Jenrick: I stand by ‘no white faces’, parts of the UK are like ghettos

0:09Today we have got an extra special daily tea live from the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Tim and I have interviewed Robert Jenrick, and my goodness, it gets fiery, it gets frosty, it is fabulous. Enjoy.

0:32Good afternoon and welcome to this Daily Tea special live from the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. Tim Stanley and I, Camilla Tomini, are here with Robert Jenrick. Let's get straight into this. We've just been in your speech. Tim and I were having a little conflap about it, and we thought it was the speech of a leader. At the end of the day, we're grasping the nettle first and foremost. Do you still harbour leadership ambitions when it comes to this party? We have a leader, Camilla, and I'm here to support her. I thought she had a fantastic speech on Sunday on the ECHR, didn't you?

1:06I thought it was great. And I'm very pleased to see the party come to the right conclusion on that. We're all here to support. I wouldn't be serving in the shadow cabinet if I didn't think the chemie was the right person to lead our party And I wanted to succeed. But do you agree that the tone of it was quite leader-ish? It was about justice. I am the shadow justice secretary Okay, you talked in the speech about four blondes, one of whom was Michael Heseltine, which surprised everyone Tarzan. He's speaking later, so I can't wait to hear what he thinks about that. Oh dear, no one told me that at which conference you quoted him he's not infected to reform has he we'll get on to that in a minute you quoted him being in bed at night and talking to his wife and asking her how do I fight, fight, fight the Labour Party, you said as an aside that you obviously don't say that to your wife you think about it but you don't say it so what we really want to know is what do you talk to your wife about in bed

2:11For those watching at home, Mrs. Jenrick is gesticulating. End this conversation. Oh, yeah. Well, yes, I've had a few faux pas in bed.

2:26Political faux pas. You might remember when I was trying to run the London Marathon and I thought, you know, I'll send a WhatsApp to a few people to try and get some sponsorship. and I hadn't quite worked out the difference between broadcast and creating a WhatsApp group. Oh, yes. So I created a WhatsApp group for everyone on my contacts. Yes. From like J.D. Vance to David Cameron and a lot of journalists who caused a bit of trouble with that. We enjoyed that for the brief moment that you gave us J.D. Vance's personal mobile number. I discovered that you can't delete a group. You are swerving the question of what you discuss in bed with Mrs.

3:06Jenrick. And we ask about Mrs. Jenrick, the brilliant Michelle, because we know she is a huge champion of yours. She's by your side at this conference. And we know that she has ambitions for you, too. Does she? I think so. To be a better husband. A better dad. In bed.

3:25On a serious note, the reason why I raised that quote from Michael Heseltine was that that is what this party has got to do now. And you've got to stand up and fight. And someone like him, back in the 1970s, when we were last in a very difficult situation, completely understood what we've got to do. You know, there's no divine right for a political party to exist, even one that served our country for 200 years, like we have. And there's been the party of Peel and Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher. The Conservative Party's got to make a choice. Does it want to stand up and fight, or is it willing to slip away?

4:03Those of us who are here at this conference, I think, are firmly in the first camp, which is that we are not going to allow it to slip through our fingers on our watch. We're going to fight for this party and we're going to fight for our country. Okay.

4:20Last question on your domestic arrangements. We ask this because it's been reported that Michelle reads out online comments about you at home to motivate you. Is that true? Well, I don't know if it's to motivate me, but it is true that she takes particular pleasure in reading out comments and tweets about me. I think it's good. It's a good grounding. I tell you what I do. I always read the comments under any article I write for the Telegraph. And I think it's incredibly helpful to understand what your readers are actually thinking. And some of them, you know, a bit florid in their language. Well, some of them are supporting reform.

5:01Well, some do. Some do. And we've got to get those people back. I want the Tory party to be the natural home for every small C conservative in this country. Do you read polling? Yeah, I take a look at it. It's not something that I fixate on, but I take a look at it, for sure. Because YouGov has come out with a survey today suggesting that half of Tory members think that Kemi Badenow shouldn't be leading the party into the next general election. Camilla, Camilla, are you going to spend the whole of this lunch Just the first five minutes. Talking about this issue. Just the first five minutes. I don't think...

5:32Does anyone come here to talk about this? Or do they actually want to ask proper questions? No, hang on a minute. About the future of our party. Hang on a minute, Robert Jenrick. Everybody in this room... Camilla, I hate to say it because this is your show. Yes, it is. But I think you're losing your audience. No, not at all. Not at all. Because, because let me just say this. This polling has come out. And we just nip it in the bud. Because this is a conversation that is taking place at conference. People are talking about Kemi Badenock's leadership, not least in mind of polling that has gone down, asking them questions about whether you would have been better.

6:08I appreciate your being very convivial and supportive. I mean, what's your message, for instance, to Tory MPs that aren't being supportive? Tory members who have spoken to me and Tim, criticising her leadership. You know, there has been talk of replacing her. I personally think that would be politically suicidal. But what do you think? My view is this. we've suffered our worst ever election defeat just over a year ago and we are in the foothills of turning this party around being leader of the opposition in this situation is an immensely difficult and challenging task and what we have to do those of us who are in parliament the designated survivors of the conservative parliamentary party those of you who are Members and supporters of the party here today is get behind Kemi Give her the support that she deserves so that she can do the difficult job of rebuilding this party

7:07So what would you say to those 16 conservative councillors who this morning reform announced to join Nigel Farage? How many conservative councillors are there? You tell us thousands does anyone have any thousands of councillors? 16 I mean I don't welcome anyone defecting from the party of course I don't but let's put this in perspective let's put this in perspective they've made their choice, that's fine they're completely at liberty to do so but what we should focus on is not what this party is doing or that party is doing but how can we change the Conservative Party the reason we lost the last general election was because we didn't deliver for the British public on some of the biggest issues that face our country We left immigration far too high.

7:52We didn't resolve the small boats crisis in large part because the government of the day wasn't prepared to rip up our outdated human rights treaties. People feel hard up in our country because living standards are not good enough. The NHS has too high waiting lists. The road back to the Conservative Party is not fixating on tittle-tattle. It's to be painfully honest about the mistakes that we made, to listen to the public, and then to bring forward serious answers to the big challenges that face our country right now. And I firmly believe that if we do that, whilst it won't be easy, and this is a long road, we can regain the trust and the confidence of the British public.

8:34That is what we should all be focused on right now. Not who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. Frankly, I don't care about that. And neither do most people. No, but politicians do have to care about winning elections. I mean, come on. But we win elections by focusing on the everyday concerns of the public. I represent a small town in North Nottinghamshire. Do you think people are interested in a council who's defected somewhere in the country? Do you think even, frankly, they're interested in the latest tittle-tattle about who's up, who's down in the shadow cabinet? They feel that life is tough right now.

9:12They think the economy is bouncing along the bottom. They've got scant regard for Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer's ability to turn things around. They're worried because their mum can't get the appointment yet on the NHS. And yes, they are sick of the small boats crisis and they want someone to get a grip because it's become emblematic of the British state failing. The Conservative Party has to be honest about those issues, has to come forward with real serious answers to them. And I think if we do that, there's every chance that we can persuade people to come back to us in the future. Well, people are worried about all those things, but right now they seem to think Nigel Farage rather than the Tories are the solution to those problems.

9:52I noticed in your speech that you didn't use the word reform once, which marks you out because all the other conferences have been either aping reform or trying to repudiate it. Is your strategy to just be better than it? Or at some point are you going to have to directly say to reform members, it's not just a case of we're better, it's also that there's something about reform that is dangerous, you shouldn't go down that path. Or are you too reluctant to be so critical of those of the Conservatives? I talk about reform, but I don't obsess about it. My view has always been that reform is a symptom, not a cause.

10:28It exists because we, the Conservative Party, as the party of government, didn't do enough to tackle the issues that millions of our fellow citizens care about. Some of those issues long predate the Conservative Party. I mean, Tony Blair is the founding father of mass migration. That's been going on the whole of my adult lifetime. What we've got to do is be better than reform and prove to people that we deserve their votes once again. I like Nigel. I think he's a good bloke to go to the pub with. Not sure I want him running my kids' school, looking after our hospital. if, God forbid, as I think is quite likely, in the next couple of years there's a fiscal crisis, the bond markets say that they have no confidence in Reeves because she's got no growth strategy, she can't cut public spending, taxes just keep going up inexorably, and there's a major challenge, and you've got homeowners whose houses are on the line, you've got businesses in a difficult situation as interest rates go up.

11:27Will people think that Nigel and reform is the answer to that? I don't know, but I'm sceptical. Why did you decide to adopt what somebody close to you described as the policies of Nigel Farage with the presentation of David Cameron? Because in a way you have tried to imitate him and you yourself have admitted that you've been on a journey and you're actually more right-wing now. You have said that. The other day Nigel, I think, said that he thought that I was more right-wing than him. Are you? I don't know. That's what Nigel said. I don't always know where Nigel stands on things. But you have admitted to being on a political journey.

12:02Nigel is in favour of scrapping the two-child benefit cap. I don't think that's a good idea. Let's take something which I think some voters might think you're more right-wing than Farage. A recording has been leaked to The Guardian in which you claim that you didn't see a white face during the hour and a half that you filmed in Handsworth in Birmingham. First of all, where and when did you say this? this is an event in Warsaw how did it unique out? how did that end up in the Guardian on the eve of your speech? as you might imagine I do not have a window into the soul of the Guardian so I'm not an expert I love it

12:45I tend to get my news from the Daily Telegraph that's a very good answer you ask a serious question and so let me respond to it. I went to Birmingham, a city I know very well. I grew up in Wolverhampton. I spent a year at university in Birmingham. I've known it my whole life, so I'm not a stranger to the city. I went there with GB News to do a video about litter at the early stages of this horrendous bin strike that has afflicted the city. You may have seen it, rubbish piling up on the streets, rats. Absolutely appalling. And we went to Hansworth in Birmingham. And yeah, it did look like a slum.

13:26It did. I think the residents would say that. The residents of Birmingham are absolutely sick to their back teeth of being run by a failing Labour council that cannot perform its most basic, basic function to pick up their bins and clean the streets. So I don't resolve from that. And the second thing that The Guardian said, or criticized me for, was saying that when I was there for an hour or two filming this, I didn't see a mix of people on the street. That was an observation. And as it happens, it's one that is entirely borne out by the statistics, like the ONS data. My view is this. So it troubles you to see an area which is ethnically monocultural.

14:16I want to live in a well-integrated country. I do not want...

14:28As I said in that recording, in the next breath, it's not about the color of your skin or the faith that you abide by. It's that I want people to be living side by side in harmonious, well-integrated communities with a genuine sense of local and national togetherness. And what saddens me about both the Guardian's article and the reporting that's happened subsequently on Sky News and the press release that was put out by the Labour Party is it's yet another attempt to shut down a very important debate that we have to have as a country. In the last 20 years, there have been at least six very significant reports into the failure of integration in our country, including by people who I respect greatly, like Baroness Casey, for example, who I worked with when I was Community Secretary.

15:23And governments have largely failed to implement their recommendations, and this issue has got worse, so that there are more pockets of our towns and cities today where people are leading these sort of segregated lives, places that are beginning to resemble ghettos. And one of the reasons why governments have failed to act is whenever anyone has the courage to talk about this, journalists and commentators pop up and try and shoot them down. Yes. I am not prepared to do that. Yeah. I am not backing down. Well, good for you. We should not back down. Good for you. Because we're speaking for millions of people in our country.

16:03And equally, I mean, I suspect that, for instance, the Sky News journalist who you argued with would say that he's not shutting you down. On the contrary, he's inviting you to explain your opinion and then interrogate it. Now, if you were to visit... No, because this doesn't work like that. With all due respect, it doesn't work like that. If you were to visit Tunbridge Wells, everyone is white. If you go to Tunbridge Wells, everyone is white. Well, no one... Okay, well, if you go to Birmingham, I can assure you not everyone is Asian as well. My point is, there are many parts of this country which are monocultural white.

16:37Now, you wouldn't go there and say, and I saw all the white people and I was troubled. The left do decolonize the countryside, decolonize the national trust. So the left do make those arguments, actually. They say that some parts of our country are monocultural. My point is that... Let me answer your question. I feel the Sky journalist... I didn't feel he had a chance to make it. But the point is that one can agree with the practical point about integration. No one's denying that because we know we have a problem in this country. But there are many people of color who will have heard that remark of you seeing an audience that is mostly non-white and feeling uncomfortable.

17:12And they will feel, what is it about me and the colour of my skin that means when you see a lot of people like me, you feel this is not properly integrated. Don't misquote me. What I said was it is not about the colour of your skin or your faith. But you identified the colour of their skin. My point is that we don't want to have communities where they do not reflect the breadth of the people who live in our country. And that is just, I think, self-evidently true. That is, unfortunately, what we're seeing in some parts of our country today. What could be done about that? Let me just finish the point, Camilla.

17:47Not only, I think, is that bad, because we want to live in a country where there's a strong sense of togetherness, but at the extreme, it leads us down a very dangerous path. Let me give you the obvious example. Last week, here in this city of Manchester, a man who has lived in this country, or had lived in this country, for 30 years, went to a synagogue and killed British Jews. That man had lived in this country for 30 years. That is shameful. Clearly there has been a failure of integration, that a man would do that. that I think his dad celebrated Hamas October 7th. Something is going badly wrong.

18:31And so we mustn't be afraid to talk about this out of misplaced fear of being labelled racist. I do want to say there are generations of Asian people who have lived in this country who are law-abiding, fully integrated, share of our values. That's my point. Good. Look, I grew up in Wolverhampton. Because I don't feel it's being said often enough in this class. I grew up in Wolverhampton. in the 80s and 90s. It was one of the most diverse cities in the country. But by and large, people lived side by side. There were differences, you know, different parts of the town as it was then, the city today.

19:11But they were not segregated communities. Even in, you know, the most affluent suburbs, they weren't like suburbs that were clearly one thing or the other i went to a school a grammar school in wolverhampton where there was a whole range of people from different backgrounds i grew up probably more than most people knowing about different faiths that is the kind of country i want to live in i do not want people living in ghettoized communities and that's very dangerous and it has to be stopped. What's the solution to that? If, as you say, there are pockets of, for instance, Birmingham, where people are living in silos, perhaps they're not speaking English predominantly, what should be done?

19:55Over in Denmark, there have been attempts to break up such communities. Is that actually feasible, practical or legal? Well, I'm interested in the ideas that have been developed in other countries. at something that we as a party should be thinking about. I know that Kemi and Kevin Hollenrake, when he was the community secretary, now James Cleverley, are engaged in this debate. There are always basics that absolutely no one should come to our country who is not fully fluent in English. No one. That has to be an absolute precondition.

20:31Secondly, the most abhorrent practices, cousin marriage, Sharia courts, we've got to tackle all of those things.

20:43We've got to ensure that our kids are being taught about our history, our culture, our language, our landscapes, the things that unite us as a country, and end all of this nonsense that we're seeing in schools today. I mean, the other day was the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and I did some research about how fluent people are. And the vast majority of under-40s had never heard of what the Battle of Britain was. in our country. Something's gone badly wrong in our school system, if that's the case. So there are lots of good things that we can and should be doing. Do I think it's easy?

21:17No, absolutely not. But I think it's one of the challenges that our generation has to step up and take on. Because I fear for our country if we were sat here in 10 or 20 years' time, and the pockets of our towns and communities become ubiquitous. That cannot be allowed to happen. and our politics as a result of this is also heading in a dangerous direction because the Member of Parliament for the place that you spoke about, Hansworth in Birmingham, is now an independent Gaza sectarian Member of Parliament. Is it conceivable that after the next election, whatever it is, Jeremy Corbyn, Zahra Sultana, you there, our party, whatever it's called, ends up winning more Members of Parliament?

22:02Might some of these essentially be Islamist sectarian members of parliament? Yes, absolutely. And I do not want to see that. I really don't. We want to move on. Thank you.

22:17We want to move on to why you're carrying a wig around. Yes, we've got to talk about the wig. Where is the box? It's somewhere in the room, I think. I hope we haven't lost that. Where did you get the wig from? Is it yours? Where does it come from? It's not mine. It's a friend of mine. It's actually a very historic one. I didn't realize this, but it was a man in the early 20th century who won the DSO, a war veteran, who then went on to be a barrister and a judge. So exactly the sort of Great Britain who we should be respecting and revering. And the reason I brought it along to conference was to illustrate the point, which is that the historic reason why judges wear wigs, or at least have continued to wear them in most settings in recent years, is because when you become a judge, you shed your own personal views, your persona, and you take on the role as an independent adjudicator and mediator.

23:16And that's obviously what the vast majority of judges do. Vast majority. That's why we have amongst the most respected and revered judiciary anywhere in the world. But I'm afraid a small number of judges are straying into the political sphere. And I think that's bringing our world-class judiciary into great disrepute. And there have been stories, particularly in the Daily Telegraph, in recent months, some great journalists like Charles Hymas, the All Home Affairs journalist, who have been coming up with these absolutely mind-boggling, insane judgments in the immigration tribunals. You know, people who can't get sent back to Nigeria because of their mental health or because somewhere has a different attitude on beards or their kid doesn't like chicken nuggets in Albania.

24:00And we laugh, but actually the joke is on us. It's on you. It's on the British people. And what we began to think is, are these judges bad judges, misapplying the European Convention on Human Rights? Yes, in some cases. Even the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has said that there are numerous cases where the courts, particularly these lower-tier immigration tribunals, are just making bad calls. But also, is something else going on? And that some of these individuals are essentially activists. And we began to look into them. And unfortunately, because I don't welcome this, we found some really, really bad things.

24:42We looked at those judges who sit in the immigration tribunals, which I think is about 100, 150 individuals. And so far, just on the base of a couple of weeks' work, and it's very hard to do this, incidentally, because there's no list of who these people are, we found at least 30 who I do not think should be judges at all. These are people who, in some cases, have been tweeting on social media, liking, retweeting, posting their own comments, saying things like celebrating that the government lost in court over Rwanda. Are you entitled to have that view, but not to be a judge at the same time? We found people who are giving their time pro bono or are trustees of open borders charities, charities, charities whose stated objectives is to really abolish all immigration controls.

25:34Now, it's a free country. You're entitled to do that, but not if you want to be a judge. If you want to do that, go into politics. Stand for parliament. If you want to be a judge, be a judge. That is what I'm saying. So this is not an assault on the judiciary. It is defending the judiciary. No, Camilla, it is defending the judiciary because I care about it. I want each and every person in this country to have faith in the independence of the judiciary. And we defend the judiciary by weeding out these bad apples who have no place in our legal system.

26:16You talk about rolling back the Blairite Revolution and some of those ways in which it sort of seeded things constitutionally to bias the state, etc. Would you like to see the Supreme Court go? Well, I didn't support the creation of the Supreme Court back in the day, and neither did the Conservative Party at the time. It doesn't feel to me to be the number one priority where the judges sit, whether it's in the House of Lords or in this building across Parliament Square, although there are arguments that it's better to be sat within the House of Lords. The priority to me is to ensure that we weed out activist judges.

26:54Because my great fear is that we win this battle to leave the European Convention on Human Rights that I've been fighting for in recent years. Say we do that and we get rid of those activist judges in Strasbourg. And then we find that we've got activist judges in our own country instead. It would be a Pyrrhic victory. We can't allow that to happen. We've got to ensure that activism within our judiciary is weeded out altogether. And we restore the judiciary to what it should be. And by and large, it is today. So what we're proposing is that we go back to the world as it was before Tony Blair. Well, if only that were true.

27:36But in this one situation where we create the Lord Chancellor's Office, he or she appoints the judges on advice from the senior judiciary. and you don't have this out-of-touch quango that currently exists. And it's clearly failing because whoever runs this quango isn't even checking the social media feed of the people they're appointing as judges. It's actually run by somebody who was forced to resign from another role in disgrace. I mean, it's a joke. So let's reform it and let's ensure that we preserve the independence of the judiciary. But to the broader point about the Tony Blair legacy, yeah, absolutely.

28:17I want to unwind that. I've been a proponent, as have others, of a sort of Great Reform Act, the Great Repeal Act, where we look at all of that web, that mesh, that mush of laws created by Blair and Brown, the Climate Change Act, the Human Rights Act, the Constitutional Reform Act, and say which of these things do we think are fit for purpose, which should be repealed altogether, which need careful pruning to make them work in the interests of the British people. And that should be one of the first and arguably most important things that a future Conservative government does. You told a Spectator interview yesterday that you thought it was a, quote, effing disgrace for people to be marching in a pro-Palestine manner today of all days on the second anniversary of the October 7th terror attacks.

29:10Thank you. Thank you.

29:15Thank you. Gideon Falter, who I know you know is the chief executive of the campaign against anti-Semitism, appeared on the Daily Tea last week. And he said that he thought the prime minister had blood on his hands in relation to the Heaton Park synagogue attack for recognising Palestine. He also said, and I quote, Britain has lost her soul if she cannot protect Jews. What's your response to those statements? Well, as I said in my speech earlier today, I don't think Britain is Britain if British Jews feel afraid. I don't think Britain is Britain if anyone feels afraid because of their religion.

29:55We've got to fight to protect people of all communities in our country. And I'm afraid we've let the British Jewish community down. Has the Prime Minister let the British Jewish community down? Because, to be fair to Keir Starmer, he did try to disenfranchise Corbyn successfully from the party and restore its reputation for being supportive of Jews on the left. But do you not think he's gone far enough? The quote was blood on his hands. I don't think Keir Starmer is responsible for what happened at the Heaton Park synagogue. That's not right. There's one man who's responsible for that, and that was the vile monster who committed that crime.

30:35and maybe there are other people who aided and abetted him, I don't know. I've seen there's been other arrests, but those are the people who we should hold responsible for that. Should we do more to protect the British Jewish community? Yes. It's not just about fine words. People are sick of that. They want to see action now. It's not just about throwing money at more stab-proof vests and training for mums and dads and decent people to protect their local congregation as they enter a synagogue. Though obviously we need to continue to do that. It's the things we talked about earlier. Zero tolerance on extremism of any kind in this country.

31:17Well, let's ask a question related to that just very briefly because we want to go to questions in the room. Gary Neville, the footballer, has said that the Union flag should be taken down. It's being turned on each other, and the division that's being created is absolutely disgusting, mainly by angry, middle-aged white men. He thinks the Union Jack is being used in a negative fashion. He sounds a bit like an angry, middle-aged white man. I'm not going to get into a spat with him. I put up some flags in Newark, the town that I represent, and I can tell you that I've never had such a good reaction.

32:02Every car, every van, every lorry that went past, honking their horns, you know, didn't know it was me. People even took to the local spotted Newark Facebook page saying, good on those lads, someone should give them a medal. They didn't know, admittedly, it was their local Tory politician. But they were happy. So, you know, I would say, I mean, it's not for me to tell you what to do, but put up flags. Be proud. Love our country.

32:46All right. So, our stipulations for questions are, state your name and where you come from. Make it brief. We don't need political statements, just questions, please. And obviously, don't ask a question that somebody's just asked. Raise your hands aloft. This chap here got his hand up first with the moustache. Row five. Sir. Mr Palmer, we are being discriminated against by this dreadful government. what are the conservatives going to do about it? Start by scrapping IHG, not just for farmers, but for everyone. OK, thank you, chap. Thank you very much. Thank you for what you do. You're absolutely right.

33:30Rachel Reeves, Keir Starmer, Steve Reid, the former Environment Secretary, the one who didn't even own a pair of wellies until Lord Ali gave him some. They lied. They lied, let's be honest, to the farming community before the general election. And then they have absolutely shafted you since then. And this is going to cause so much harm. You know, I represent a rural community. I know many farmers. I went to the local agricultural show in Lincolnshire earlier in the year. And the biggest queue was for the 10th of the local solicitors or tax advisors. And that's insane, isn't it? You've got hard-working people, amongst the hardest-working people in our country, who should be out running their businesses, looking after their families, helping our food security.

34:19They're queuing up to try and work out how the hell do we get ourselves out of this situation, because we always thought we could hand our farm on to our kids and our grandkids, not live out the last years of our lives in fear. And worse than that, sir, I went with GB News to meet a man in South Yorkshire, not far from my constituency, whose dad had killed himself. Killed himself. Not the only one, sir, absolutely not. He killed himself because he was so worried about this and he thought that this was likely to be in the budget. It had been trailed, I think, in the days leading up to it. And so on the eve of the budget, because he thought maybe it would come into force on the night of the budget, as some tax measures do, he went into the barn on their farm and he killed himself.

35:12So I don't believe in incendiary language but there are literally people who have taken their own lives because of what Rachel Rees and Keir Starmer have done. Shame on them. Shame on them for doing that. There's a lady there who we've given the microphone too. Yes. Hi, I'm Navana Mahmood. I am a new member of the Conservative Party. Brilliant. I classify myself as a progressive Muslim. And you said there is no place for extremism in this country. So when the Conservative Party will ban the Muslim Brotherhood? Thank you. Yeah, very good. Very good.

35:57Well, I would ban it tomorrow. I wish we'd banned it in the past. Look, I've always, in my time in Parliament, fought to ban these appalling groups. Hamas and Hezbollah, for example. I was part of the campaign to ensure that they were both fully prescribed. Not this ludicrous situation where the Foreign Office was saying that there was a political wing of them that was somehow full of nice people, but then there was a military one that was full of bad guys. I mean, imagine how foolish we would look as a country If we'd listened to those people in the foreign office, and then October the 7th happens, and we hadn't even fully banned Hamas.

36:35So we fully banned those. I have argued for a long time, not successfully, sadly, that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps should also be banned, fully prescribed as an organization. Terrorists that they are. Didn't win that argument within government, unfortunately. And yes, madam, I absolutely agree with you that the Muslim Brotherhood should be added to that stable. And how crazy is it that we here in this Western democracy are pussyfooting around over that and you've got our friends and allies in Gulf states saying, what the hell are you guys doing? They think it's mad that we're not stronger on Islamist extremism.

37:15The things that they did years ago, we're still too afraid to do. Come on, step up. We'll just go to the, because you've got the mic at the back there, let's go to that person that you were just going to give it to. Thank you. Zoe Cluer, Wiltshire Council, but this is a general question for you, Robert. How can we get the balance better between free speech and protesting today of all days? And how do you feel about policing in general at the moment? Very good question. Well, we do believe in freedom of speech, don't we? and we believe in the right to protest and that will sometimes mean people taking to the streets of our country saying things that we find offensive.

37:57That is the nature of freedom of speech. It's protecting the right for people to say things that we vehemently disagree with. But there is a boundary and we've got to enforce that. And if people are taking to the streets, for example, lionizing those terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, shouting jihad, broadcasting on Big Ben, anti-Semitic chants, holding banners saying, globalize the Intifada, that is not appropriate. That is not Britain. So I want the police to be very firm and to arrest those individuals and then the courts to show them the full force of the law. That is what we should be standing for.

38:41But I do believe that there will be some things that you and I would never want to do ourselves, but which we will have to stand up and defend. And let me give you an example. Earlier in the year, a man stood outside the Turkish consulate and he burnt a copy of the Koran. I would never do that. And I would never condone anyone burning a holy text, whether it's the Torah or the Bible, whatever it happened to be. But do I think that's a criminal offense? No. No, I don't. I think you should be able to do something like that. There might be instances where it's a criminal offence. If somebody stood outside a mosque and did that, deliberately to intimidate people as they were coming and going and to incite violence or hatred, then that may well, or most certainly would, step over the line.

39:39But on an ordinary street with no intent, No one was watching him other than one or two passers-by. No. And so we have to defend people like that. The CPS, in their wisdom, charged that man with incitement against the religious institution of Islam. That offense does not exist in our country. In fact, Parliament banned blasphemy 20 years ago. And so we stepped in. We raised the alarm. And although the CPS never apologized, they changed the charge against this man. He still was actually found guilty of a lesser offense. And a brilliant organization called the Free Speech Union is fighting to defend him now.

40:27And I hope that they succeed when he's in court. But that is the kind of uncomfortable battle we'll have to fight. because that man, though we may disagree with him, is at the front line of the battle of freedom of speech. And so we've got to step up as Conservatives because this is one of the battles of our generation. It's not going to be Keir Starmer who fights the corner for freedom of speech. It's going to be us, the Conservative Party. OK, let's ask the journalists from the Press Association, please do credit the Daily Tea in any copy on the Ys. Hello, Helen Corbett from the Press Association.

41:06I know you've said that you don't obsess about reform, but given the threat that they're posing, why did you not mention them at all in your speech today? Because I don't obsess about them.

41:19Madam, as you're nearby to the glasses there, second row. Hiya, Alita Adi from The Guardian. Robert, you... Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Hello. Hi, everyone. You say it's not about race. because I'm talking about your hands-worth comments, but isn't the argument itself implying a white normative standard of what normal public life should look like? No. And on what empirical basis do you believe that the visibility of white people over a 90-minute interval is a valid metric of a community's level of integration? Have you looked up the statistics that the ONS publish about that community? I'm asking you the question, Robert.

41:57It doesn't sound like you have. Go and look at what the ONS say about that community. Look, I was very clear. I'll say it again for your benefit. I was very clear in the remarks that I gave at that meeting that this is not about the color of your skin or the faith that you abide by. It's that wherever possible, I want communities to be well integrated and for people of all faiths and skin colors to be living side by side in harmonious, well integrated communities. That does not happen in all parts of our country. And maybe you disagree. It's a free country. But I do not want my children to grow up in a country where people of one skin colour live in one part of town.

42:42People of another skin colour live in another part of town. The Muslims, the Jews, the Christians have got their bits of town. Come on. We're better than that. This is Britain. Let's build a better Britain. Let's have a couple more non-journalist questions. The chat there with the glasses. Max from London, if you had to choose, who would be your favourite member of the cabinet? Ooh. Ooh. That's hard. That's not an easy one, is it? Because we've basically got a group of student politicians running this country today. I quite like the new Home Secretary, Shibana Mahmood. I used to shadow her when she was the Justice Secretary.

43:22I did such a good job that she got promoted. but I think she's being set up to fail I really do I don't say that with any pleasure because we're all patriots in this room aren't we we wanted to succeed we wanted to stop the boats and protect our borders but in that reshuffle two things happened one Keir Starmer brought in somebody ostensibly who was tough to be home secretary but he kept Lord Hermer as the attorney General. So he tied her hands behind her back. We are never going to stop the small boats crisis unless we leave the European Convention on Human Rights, scrap these outdated human rights laws, and ensure that our own parliament is sovereign.

44:09So there'll be big rhetoric, poor delivery. You know, look, on one level, good, Labour will fail. For our country, I'm very sad by that, because three or four years of mass migration of undocumented men, mostly, coming into our country on small boats is very, very damaging. That's a really bad thing for our country. I wish Sivana Mood all the luck in the world in trying to resolve that. One more question I think we've got time for from this chap at the front. Thank you. Paul Mason, Brockesbourne. Do you think the party's shown enough contrition over our term in office? Look, I don't believe in self-flagellation for too long.

44:58For too long? For too long. I think you have to... The Conservative Party has to be very, very honest with the public about the mistakes that we've made as the essential precondition for persuading people to give us a hearing. There's no point announcing this policy or that policy, what might we do if we got back into government if no one trusts us. You can say what you like. So it's very, very important that people, the people we care about, think they get it. And an essential part of that is making a sincere apology. But when I make mistakes and I go home and apologize to my wife,

45:50it doesn't get me very far i have to show that i am a changed man and i will never do that again and i mean in all seriousness because what we've got to do is show not tell the speeches you make the tweets you tweet will only get you so far the public are not fools we've got to take every opportunity to demonstrate that we will never do those mistakes again. And that to me means, be very clear, the party of mass migration is over. Never again will the Conservative Party turn a blind eye or be too fearful of our reputation or respectability, what job we might get on the international circuit after we've left office, rather than taking tough decisions.

46:43And if we can do that, if we can do that, essentially return the Conservative Party to what it's always been at its best, which is the trade union of the British people, the party that is most in tune with the sentiment of the British public. If we can do that, we can turn this thing around. When we've suffered our worst defeats and reverses, it was because we lost touch with the British public. when we achieved our greatest reversals of fortune, when we got back into office in the 1970s, for example, under Margaret Thatcher, or under the Cameron regime in the 2010s. It was by and large because we understood what the people of this country actually wanted.

47:28And we worked in lockstep with the sentiment and the views of the public. That's what we've got to do. If we do that, I'm an optimist. this party has bounced back in the past and it can do so again in the future. But thank you.

47:46Rob, we have one final question that's come in by email from Mr. K. Starmer of Surrey who says, what is your weight loss secret?

47:59Well, I said earlier that I've basically become kind of the drug mule to the Conservative Party now. I think he's operating the sort of a Zempic government right now, where he's sort of jabbing in all these little sort of pricks. And he's not just slowing growth, but he's actually stuck it dramatically into decline right now. On a serious note, yeah, I did a bit of that. It was fine, but I've got out playing tennis with my kids, boxing go running almost every day go to the gym a bit it's good and a touch of self-flagellation helps too rob jenrich thank you very much for joining us on the daily tea thank you and we will of course be back tomorrow at 5 p.m.

48:52with our analysis of kemi badenock's speech thank you everyone in the room for joining us and on the live stream at home

49:05Thank you.