Home Office flying of Pride flag was ‘monstrous thing’, says Braverman | Pride

Suella Braverman has attacked “liberal Conservatives”, saying she was angered by the flying of the Pride flag in her department as UK home secretary, calling it a “monstrous thing”.

In comments during a speech on Monday night that brought a backlash from LGBTQ+ Conservatives, Braverman said the party had failed to “stop the lunatic woke virus” and had been dumped out of office on a failure to keep its promises.

“We won a great majority in 2019 promising to do what the people wanted,” she told the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC. “We were going to use our Brexit freedoms and stop waves of illegal migrants. We were going to cut taxes. We were going to stop the lunatic woke virus. We did none of this.

“Our problem is us. Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone’s fault but their own. My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame.”

She said she was unable to stop the Pride flag being flown in her department against her wishes. “What the Progress flag says to me is one monstrous thing: that I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals and from our schools,” she said.

Reacting to Braverman’s attacks, Iain Dale, the former Conservative candidate and radio presenter, said: “What a disgusting speech. And she seriously thinks she has a chance of leading the Conservative party. Not while I have a breath left in my body. Moderate Conservatives need to stand up and be counted. This will not stand.”

Another Conservative candidate, Casey Byrne, said he had written to Sunak asking him to expel Braverman. “Whilst my voice does not matter alone, I urge all decent people to speak up too. This cannot be allowed to go without consequences,” he wrote on X.

Braverman is expected to run for the Conservative leadership though she is believed to be losing support to Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister who will run on a hardline anti-migration platform.

Braverman will speak via a video link to a Popular Conservatism post-election event in Westminster on Tuesday, though the four key MPs from that faction, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Simon Clarke and Ranil Jayawardena all lost their seats. Rees-Mogg will address the conference, as will the former Brexit negotiator David Frost.

Rees-Mogg urged his former party not to move to the centre at the forthcoming leadership election to replace Rishi Sunak and said the former prime minister Boris Johnson been successful when he moved to the right and promised to deliver Brexit.

Several Conservatives have disputed that analysis of the 2019 victory, countering that Johnson had also promised in the election to level up working-class communities in the north of England.

Rees-Mogg told GB News: “The Conservative party took its base for granted. We assumed that voters would not want, would be frightened, would fear a Labour government and would carry on voting for a Conservative government that they were uninspired by, probably even fed up with.”

“We failed to show ourselves to be on the side of the people who had historically voted for us. We did not appear to be Conservative and they duly blew us a large raspberry. Now some people keep on saying that the Conservatives will only win from the centre, but this is not true. In fact, it’s balderdash. It is a political myth.”

MPs will meet on Tuesday to begin preparations for a new leadership election, which many MPs believe should run beyond party conference this October. Sunak is understood to be prepared to stay as interim leader only until the end of summer recess.