Robert Jenrick Hit With Brutal X Community Note Over His Response To Belfast Knife Attack

Robert Jenrick was hit with a brutal community note on X after he gave his reaction to the Belfast knife attack.

A 30-year-old Sudanese man who was granted a five-year visa to remain the in UK in 2023 has been charged with attempted murder and is due to appear in court later today.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Jenrick who defected to Reform UK from the Tories earlier this year, said: “We’ve woken up to truly barbaric footage on a street in Belfast. Of a kind you’d think you’d never see in this country.

“For years now I’ve urged the police to spell out the basic, sober facts, as they have them, when there are horrors like this.”

Zia Yusuf, who is Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said the alleged incident in belfast “is a direct result of treacherous Tory and Labour immigration policy”. 

But a community note added by X users to Jenrick’s post pointed out that he was immigration minister in the last Tory government when the man was given leave to remain in the UK.

What’s more, Suella Braverman, who also switched to Reform from the Tories, was Home Secretary in overall charge of the UK’s immigration policy.

Sky News correspondent Alexandra Rogers also pointed out how the issue was awkward for Reform.

She said: “I think there will be a little bit disquiet in that party taking on some of these Tories and having to defend this record, undermining was Reform is trying to do now.

“It really highlights that reputational risk that Nigel Farage absorbed when he took on former Conservatives.”

But in an interview on GB News, Braverman defended her record while in government.

She said: “As home secretary I repeatedly argued to the prime minister and the cabinet that we needed to leave the [European Convention on Human Rights] to stop the invasion.

“For this, I was attacked, blocked and undermined by my own Conservative colleagues who have consistently refused to apologise for the failures of the last government.

“The failure to stop the boats and leave the ECHR remains the greatest betrayal by the last Conservative government and it is why over 90% of asylum claims are approved. It is the main reason I left that dysfunctional and treacherous party and why the Conservative Party can never be trusted again.”

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