Robert Jenrick Claims 'Millions Of People In England Are Not English' Amid Identity Row

Robert Jenrick has claimed “millions” of people in England are not “culturally or ethnically” English.

It comes after a war of words between his right-wing party and his former Conservative colleagues.

The spat began when Tory defector, Reform MP Suella Braverman, said she did not consider herself to be English even though she was born and raised in England.

Her former boss, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, used her keynote speech at her party conference earlier this week to slam such claims and attack Reform as a whole.

She told delegates: “I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children are English.

’I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our Black players are English.”

But Reform’s Treasury spokesperson Jenrick reignited the debate on GB News on Thursday, saying there were three aspects which defined English identity.

The first, he claimed, was that “there is such a thing as English ethnicity”.

The second is English cultural identity, according to Jenrick. He said that means “somebody fully embracing of our history, our heritage, our language, our culture, our norms, our manners”.

He then added: ”Holding a passport does not mean that you are culturally English or British. And sadly, there are many, many people in this country who display that, and neither does it mean that you’re ethnically English either.” 

His remarks sparked alarm on X, with the Tory’s shadow defence minister Ben Obese-Jecty writing: “I used to work for Robert Jenrick; a chameleon who will say whatever serves him best in that moment.

“But how comfortable is Jenrick about Reform’s current targeting of ethnicity.”

He continued: “This is a man who used to speak with pride about his half-Israeli, mixed-race Jewish family, now leaning into a debate on the side of those who would say his own children could never be English.

“The same people who would remigrate them to Israel.

“Who would target Zia Yusuf and Suella Braverman, Laila Cunningham, Raheem Kassam, even Danny Kruger.

“Reform’s dangerous descent into the gutter of dog-whistle racism, balkanisation and ethnonationalism is going to fail, but in doing so it is going to cause irreparable damage to Britain and make it a far darker and more dangerous place.”

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