Jenrick struggles to defend Reform’s latest smear campaign

On 2 June, Nigel Farage released a ‘special announcement’ in which he sought to stoke racial tensions on the back of a horrific murder. This was something he did against the wishes of the murdered man’s parents. Farage, the leader of Reform, made these comments which were followed by a riot, which was carried out by white supremacists who argued the exact same things as Farage.

Kemi Badenoch also commented on the situation, but did so marginally less divisively than Farage. Reform UK responded by misquoting what she said:

Kemi Badenoch, just like Starmer, doesn’t care.

Only Reform UK will openly say that white lives matter too. pic.twitter.com/dAUd7FRUvR

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— Reform UK (@reformparty_uk) June 2, 2026

Since then, Robert Jenrick has struggled to defend his party’s attack.

Jenrick rattled

Jenrick struggled to defend Reform’s blatant dishonesty in an interview with Robert Peston:

.@Peston: That is a travesty of Kemi Badenoch’s position!@RobertJenrick: No it isn’t.

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick is shown @KemiBadenoch’s GMB interview and denies ‘manipulating’ a tragedy to score ‘petty political points’ #Peston pic.twitter.com/ypt80BjgA3

— Peston (@itvpeston) June 3, 2026

The interview went like this:

Peston: That is a travesty of Kemi Badenoch’s position.

Jenrick: No, it isn’t.

Peston: It is a travesty because this is what she actually said. Can you play what she said please?

Peston then played a clip in which Badenoch said:

Okay, well let me answer the question. I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter. Enough of this nonsense where we keep separating everybody and splitting people into different groups. We are descending into tribalism.

As we’ll get into, there are problems with what Badenoch said; just not the problems Reform made up.

Peston: So just to be absolutely clear, there is no world in which she is endorsing Black Lives Matter

Jenrick: These are her words, Robert.

Peston: The first lot was in 2020 and totally out of context. Totally out of context. Even Rupert Lowe has said about that ad that you are manipulating the death of an innocent man to score petty party points.

Jenrick would later say:

Jenrick: Kemi Badenoch, when the Black Lives Matter issue arose, said, “Black lives do matter.” Then she went on to the media and said, I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter.

As Peston noted, she said this in the context of saying that she doesn’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter either. So basically, Farage whipped up a white riot in Southampton, and then his party made up a load of lies when they got challenged.

Dozens of bricks being thrown pic.twitter.com/VwPXkfZlmR

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) June 2, 2026

Grim stuff.

And in response, Farage and Jenrick should crawl under the nearest rock.

But Reform isn’t the only party talking nonsense.

Just as Bad(enoch)

In a new video which is part of a paid advertising campaign, Badenoch has said she’s tired of people arguing about ‘whether Black or white lives matter more’.

Important video from @KemiBadenoch
pic.twitter.com/ErcWzUaNe5

— Conservatives (@Conservatives) June 3, 2026

Of course, this was never the message of the Black Lives Matter movement. Badenoch is suggesting otherwise because she — like Farage — is a liar and an opportunist.

The Black Lives Matter movement sprung up in response to racist policing in the US. These police officers were responsible for a disproportionate number of Black deaths, giving the impression that Black lives were less important than white lives in the eye of the American state. The slogan, then, was created to state that Black people’s lives do matter – not that they matter more than anyone else’s.

Figures like Badenoch and Farage flipped the slogan to suggest it meant white lives don’t matter, because they’re conniving chancers whose political movement is reliant on white rage.

In other words, Badenoch, like Farage and Jenrick of Reform, should crawl back under the same rock.

Featured image via Peter Nicholls and Alishia Abodunde / Getty Images

By Willem Moore

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