Newark Advertiser reader letters: MP should spend more time on own community
In a week that has seen substantial weather damage to our town, not least in the form of major road closures because of flooding, our Member of Parliament has been a regular fixture on television and on social media.
Not that Mr Jenrick has been talking about any of the issues facing the lives of many people in Newark. Rather, Mr Jenrick seems to have become fixated by the view that ‘immigrants with alien cultures’ are destroying the nation and that there are communities within Britain with ‘medieval attitudes towards women’.
Had Mr Jenrick used his position in the Home Office while the last Conservative government was in power to raise serious questions about the truly awful grooming scandals in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire, one might have had more sympathy with his current crusade. However, according to the BBC, Mr Jenrick has failed to raise the issue in the House of Commons at any point since his election in 2014.
There is of course a serious point to be made about the Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham scandals. Yet Mr Jenrick’s current, deeply divisive, rhetoric risks causing major damage to the fabric of British society.
When MPs from within his own party are resorting to writing to their new leader to complain of Mr Jenrick’s tone, it is a sign that things have gone too far.
Mr Jenrick seems to fail to understand that — whatever their politics — most Newarkers are balanced individuals not easily taken to extremism.
Perhaps Mr Jenrick may wish to spend more time supporting the communities affected by flooding in his own constituency rather than chasing headlines through his misleading and misplaced rhetoric. — David Lees, Newark.