Kemi Badenoch has been urged to sack Robert Jenrick after he suggested the Tories could cap immigration from “alien cultures with medieval attitudes towards women”.

The shadow justice secretary stood by his claim that Britain has failed at integrating immigrants from some countries, pointing to the grooming gangs scandal as evidence.

“The scandal started with the onset of mass migration… importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last week.

Mr Jenrick has been accused of “jumping on the bandwagon” after the issue was pushed by tech billionaire Elon Musk with a series of attacks on Sir Keir Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips.

He has not condemned Mr Musk’s language and appeared to be aping the far-right rhetoric – even though the world’s richest man has been openly supporting far-right extremists such as Tommy Robinson and Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.

Pressed about his language against Muslims on Tuesday, Mr Jenrick told GB News that Britain has welcomed “millions of people in recent years… and some of them have backwards, frankly medieval attitudes to women”.

It came as friends of Mr Jenrick told The Independent that he still harbours ambitions to be Tory leader amid speculation that Ms Badenoch may not survive.