Blake Stephenson was appointed to the Tory frontbench two weeks ago. Photograph: Roger Harris\/Roger Harris PhotographyView image in fullscreenBlake Stephenson was appointed to the Tory frontbench two weeks ago. Photograph: Roger Harris\/Roger Harris PhotographyTory shadow minister claims Luton has \u2018no-go zones\u2019 where \u2018white people won\u2019t go\u2019Blake Stephenson tells fringe meeting at Tory conference that the town is \u2018a very dangerous place\u2019 with \u2018ghettoes\u2019A shadow Conservative Home Office minister has claimed there are \u201cno-go zones\u201d in Luton where \u201cwhite people won\u2019t go\u201d.Blake Stephenson, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire who was appointed to the Tory frontbench two weeks ago, claimed the town was \u201ca very dangerous place\u201d where some communities \u201clive in ghettoes\u201d.His comments, made at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference, mirror claims by far-right activists including from the terrorist mass murderer Anders Breivik, who have also said the town has \u201cno-go zones\u201d. These claims have been denied by the local police force as well as local Muslim and Christian groups.Appearing at a Centre for Policy Studies meeting in Birmingham, Stephenson claimed to know Luton well because he lives in the neighbouring constituency. \u201cI know Luton reasonably well because I live 10, 15 minutes away and represent Mid Bedfordshire, I live in a village just over the border.\u201cI think the town is a shadow of its former self.<\/p>\n
There are parts of that town \u2013 and unfortunately the police will tell you this \u2013 it can be a very dangerous place. There are parts where white people won\u2019t go. They are like no-go zones. It is not alone, there are other towns across the country in a similar situation.<\/p>\n
It is dreadful where we have got to.\u201cBut we can move on from it but it requires deep levels of integration and we need to break apart these, erm \u2026 this is where it gets icky, but we need to make sure we don\u2019t have ghettoes where there are no-go zones for anybody. The country is for all of us not just certain communities,\u201d he said.\u201cIt does get icky for some people, but I think there is a consensus, certainly on the right, that mass migration has been an absolute disaster.\u201cSo it\u2019s up to us to put a plan together and deliver. We\u2019ve got the borders plan. You know, some of that may feel a bit icky for some people, but we\u2019ve got to face into it, lean into it,\u201d he said.In a statement delivered to court in Oslo in 2012, Breivik asked his audience to look at Luton \u201cand the more than 1,000 Islamic no-go zones where police do not dare pass through\u201d.<\/p>\n
The city was, he said, living in \u201cwarlike conditions\u201d.Bedfordshire police said in a statement at the time that \u201cno-go areas do not exist in Bedfordshire\u201d.Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, co-founded the far-right English Defence League in Luton in 2009, and claimed there were \u201cno-go zones\u201d for white people in the town.Stephenson, who was elected as an MP in 2024, read industrial relations with politics at the University of Kent, before studying law at the University of Law in Guildford. He was called to the bar in 2007.He was appearing at a fringe meeting entitled From Boriswave to Brain Drain: How Can We Fix Migration?Earlier in the discussion, Stephenson said the Equalities Act had created a framework where \u201cwhite young men\u201d were being discriminated against, and claimed the government was reserving internships for racial minorities.\u201cYou know, equality should be equality for all. It\u2019s a fairly, fairly simple concept, but it\u2019s actually become quite a complicated construct. And the people that are losing out are white young men,\u201d he said.He claimed that some government schemes did not allow young white men to apply. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised that young white men feel like the system is rigged against them, particularly with the government coming out with schemes that won\u2019t allow them to apply for internships.<\/p>\n
That is state-sponsored racism and it needs to stop,\u201d he said.The Conservative party has been approached for comment.Sarah Owen, the Labour MP for Luton North, said: \u201cIt is deeply irresponsible for any politician, let alone a senior Conservative to peddle the same rightwing nonsense about Luton that we see from the likes of Yaxley-Lennon and Reform.\u201cIt is simply untrue and the shadow Home Office minister should get off social media and get to know the fantastic Lutonians I\u2019m proud to represent and call ny neighbours. I\u2019d also call on the new Lib Dem\/Tory\/Green coalition-run council in Luton to disown these comments from their colleague.\u201dExplore more on these topicsConservative conference 2026LutonConservativesImmigration and asylumShareReuse this content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blake Stephenson was appointed to the Tory frontbench two weeks ago. Photograph: Roger Harris\/Roger Harris PhotographyView image in fullscreenBlake Stephenson was appointed to the Tory frontbench two weeks ago. Photograph: Roger Harris\/Roger Harris PhotographyTory shadow\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}