Robert Jenrick has been accused of ‘anti-British’ comments after he suggested he would ban the burqa in Britain.
The shadow justice secretary, tipped as a potential successor to the struggling Ms Badenoch, pointed to Italy where prime minister Giorgia Meloni had recently proposed outlawing the traditional Muslim dress in public places.
Labour MP Sam Rushworth hit back denouncing the comments, which put Mr Jenrick at odds with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, as “anti-British” and going “against what our nation stands for”.
Tory leader Ms Badenoch has previously rejected the idea of a ban – saying the move “won’t fix the problem of cultural separatism”.
Mr Jenrick told his ‘Ring Rob’ programme on Talk, “I probably would ban the burqa”.
He said there were “basic values in this country and we should stand up and defend them”.
He added: “Where you’re seeing them fraying at the edges or frankly being completely destroyed – whether it’s Sharia courts or wearing of the burqa – these are issues we’re going to have to confront if we want to build the kind of society that we want to hand on to our kids and grandkids.”
Ms Badenoch has suggested that employers should have the right to stop staff wearing them in the workplace earlier this year but argued against a countrywide ban.
She said: “France has a ban and they have worse problems than we do in this country on integration. So banning the burqa clearly is not the thing that’s going to fix things.”
The Tory leader added that she wouldn’t let people into her constituency surgeries if they wore face veils, because she has “strong views about face coverings”.
Former prime minister Theresa May previously said the government should not tell women what to wear, when it came to the burqa.
Mr Jenrick was recently at the centre of a furious row after he complained he “didn’t see another white face” during a 90-minute visit to Handsworth, Birmingham, this year.
“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in,” he said, before adding it was “not about the colour of your skin or your faith”, but about people “living alongside each other”.
Earlier this month Italy’s ruling Brothers of Italy party said it planned to introduce legislation seeking to ban the burqa, saying it was a move against “Islamic separatism.”
Recently elected Reform MP Sarah Pochin also called on Keir Starmer to ban the burqa earlier this year.
But a Reform spokesman later clarified that banning burqas was not party policy, sparking calls from the far-right for Mr Farage to adopt the proposals.
And, in an extraordinary row, the chairman of the party branded her “dumb” for making the request.
Zia Yusuf took to X, formerly Twitter, to say it was “dumb for a party to ask the prime minister if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do”.
