Kemi Badenoch has launched an attack on the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, describing it as an example of an organisation taken over by “leftist” ideas.
Speaking on stage at an international gathering of conservatives, the business secretary and minister for women and equalities, agreed with the suggestion that the “more extreme ideas” about the rights of trans people had been defeated.
“We started going down the wrong track on gender ideology because we allowed other people to tell government about what to do. Again, ideas that came from the leftist point of view feeding into particular charities. Stonewall is the best example of this [but] it’s not the only one,” she added.
“It’s not the same Stonewall of 20 or 30 years ago, which started advising government and saying: ‘Well, this is what you need to do in order to serve a particular community.’ And then it overreached and started giving people legal advice or advice that is certainly different from what the Equality Act says.”
Badenoch, who is tipped as a future Conservative leadership contender, was speaking on the final day of a lavish three-day summit organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new rightwing umbrella group headed by Philippa Stroud, the influential Tory thinktanker and peer, and backed by the owners of GB News.
Attenders included hundreds of British, American, Australian and other conservatives around the world. Those addressing the event remotely included the new Trump-supporting US House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the would-be Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Stonewall’s spokesperson defended its work, saying it provided expert guidance to employers to make sure LGBTQ+ people are supported to thrive at work. They added: “Organisations are free to implement our guidance and make it work for their contexts. It is not a question of right- or leftwing thinking to unlock the potential of LGBTQ+ employees.
“We have never professed to offer legal advice and it is important to represent our work accurately.”
Badenoch was speaking against the backdrop of continuing calls for the publication of long-awaited government guidance for schools on gender dysphoria, which many fear could fail to protect trans children.
Asked by the editor of Unherd, Freddie Sayers, if she believed that the argument around trans rights in the UK had “turned” and if “some of the more extreme ideas around trans ideology” were being defeated, Badenoch replied: “I do think they are.”
The minister also took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives by businesses, saying: “This is coming out of academia, who don’t have to deal with the consequences of their flawed ideology … We can’t refight the battles of 100, 200 years ago, we have to deal with the battles of today.
“We need to stop getting distracted by pronouns, critical race theory, and measuring people’s skin colours,” she told the conference.
