Feeding toxic nationalism or fair comment? Brummies respond to Robert Jenrick

1 hour ago Share Save Rebecca Woods and Eleanor Lawson in Birmingham Share Save

Soho Road BID The busy Soho Road runs through the centre of Handsworth, in Birmingham

Three miles of glittering lights should have been illuminating Handsworth's Soho Road this weekend, with 20,000 people expected for the annual Diwali celebrations. Instead, organisers have been left scrambling to organise a muted switch-on, with Sunday's event cancelled following advice from its safety advisory group, amid nationwide security concerns in the wake of the Manchester synagogue attack. At the offices of the Soho Road Business Independent District (BID), Rakesh Soni has just got off the phone to a coach firm that was due to bring a bus load of older women from Telford in Shropshire. "It's such a shame," he says. "People come from all over the country and from all communities – Jamaican, white, Vietnamese, Polish, Kurdish. "There are 26 different cuisines on Soho Road and it's so friendly, everyone looks out for one another – if that doesn't say integration then I don't know what does."

Getty Images Many have leapt to Handsworth's defence this week after Robert Jenrick said it was "as close as I've come to a slum in this country"

He's referring to Conservative MP Robert Jenrick's recorded comments, made at an event earlier this year and published by the Guardian, that Handsworth was "one of the worst integrated places I've ever been to", and "as close as I've co