Tom Tugendhat blasted Sir Keir for failing to sack Ms Phillips (Image: Getty)
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Tory leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat has said the Prime Minister should have sacked Home Office minister Jess Phillips after she appeared to justify rioting Asians in Birmingham last week.
Ms Phillips responded to scenes of masked Asian men in her home town intimidating Sky News journalists, arguing the lawless crowd was there “because it has been spread that racists were coming to attack them”.
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She blasted Reform UK MP Richard Tice for "spreading" the misinformation that forced the aggressive protesters out onto the street.
This afternoon former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said Sir Keir Starmer showed a “failure of leadership” by allowing Ms Phillips to keep her top ministerial job.
Arguing that Britain must now address the root causes of last week’s riots, Mr Tugendhat also took a swipe at Nigel Farage, who claimed the authorities were withholding information about the Southport stabber.
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Mr Tugendhat said: “Later he justified amplifying this false information by saying he had believed influencers like Andrew Tate, and chose to condemn the 'breakdown' of law and order preceding the riots, but not the riots themselves.
“I want to be clear: this is not leadership. It is deeply irresponsible and dangerous.
“Later, when gangs of masked men gathered in Birmingham brandishing weapons and, live on camera, threatened female journalists, and attempted to slash the tyres of broadcast vans, Jess Phillips – a Home Office minister – chose to justify their behaviour instead of condemning it, because these were not Far Right hooligans, but young Muslim men.
“One man attacked by these vigilantes ended up in hospital.
“This was a failure of leadership just as surely as that of Nigel Farage. And it is not the only failure of leadership by Keir Starmer’s government over these last two weeks.”
Mr Tugendhat said that for at least two decades, the British establishment has avoided being brutally honest about the underlying social unrest across society, “preferring instead the warmth and false comfort of denial and complacency. Bombs have been detonated, and we have moved on. Attempted terror attacks have gone by without much comment”.
He said that the riots had been the new Labour Government’s first real test in office, and claimed Sir Keir had “fallen short”.
The top Tory blasted: “When we needed a strong government, we got a party still in the mindset of opposition.
“When we needed a leader, we got a lawyer waiting for the case to reach court.”
Mr Tugendhat also addressed the perception that there is ‘two-tier policing’ in Britain, saying it is fair to criticise the “inconsistent” and “weak” responses to criminality during recent anti-Israel protests.
He slammed the police’s hypocrisy, pointing out: “Their justification for not wanting to ban those marches was that the threshold in the Public Order Act 1986 was not reached. But if the chief constable did not believe banning the marches would prevent ‘serious public disorder' how could they claim arresting lawbreakers at the time would lead to wider disorder?”
He also echoed criticism from Reform UK about the police handling of Muslim rioting in Birmingham last week, saying it was wrong for the police to have consulted “community leaders” about the type of response that would be needed to potential violence.
Mr Tugendhat said that such an approach to policing ethnic minority communities “is not, as the police oath requires, policing ‘without fear or favour’”.
He also accused the lenient and liberal immigration system of importing “militant identity politics” from abroad, and the “politicisation of race”.
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The Tory leadership hopeful also pronounced opposition to Labour’s planned laws banning ‘Islamophobia’, saying such legislation would create a “blasphemy law for one face” and undermine free speech.
Reacting to the speech, a Conservative MP said: "Our response to the type of incidents we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks needs to change".
"Now is the time for raw honesty about the challenges we face, and what we must do to overcome them. Tom’s speech was a good first step to doing just that."