Some members of the LGBT+ Conservative group are questioning their future in the party amid concerns their rights are being weaponised during the leadership contest in a bid to pander to the “far right”.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have taken aim at “woke” issues during the course of the campaign and been accused of using these as “red meat” to whip up support among the party’s grassroots.
Although Truss was endorsed by Penny Mordaunt, who urged rivals not to fuel a culture war before she was knocked out of the race last month, the trade minister’s supporters have not followed suit en-masse.
Instead, some privately accused Mordaunt of “selling out” and putting the possibility of a cabinet job over her principles.
The prospect of either Truss or Sunak winning given the campaign has caused concern among several LGBTQ+ members.
Natalie Bowen, a Welsh Conservative member and vice-chair of Rhondda pride, cited “huge concerns” over Sunak’s pledge to review the Equality Act.
Last week, the former chancellor attacked “woke nonsense” and hit out at “leftwing agitators” for trying to “take a bulldozer to our history, our traditions and our fundamental values”. He accused them of “rewriting the English language so we can’t even use words like ‘man’, ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ without being told we’re offending someone”.
Bowen said paring back legislation designed to protect those with protected characteristics would “leave many groups vulnerable to persecution and attack”, and added: “Homophobia and transphobia are not freedom of speech, they are hate and hate needs to be contested.”
Given the government’s plan not to ban conversion practices for trans people, Bowen said she was already questioning remaining a Conservative member, but added that “the nature of the contest” had furthered those concerns.
“I just hope that the party remains a centre-right party and doesn’t continue its swing towards the far right,” she added.
Elena Bunbury, who chairs the LGBT+ Conservatives group but was speaking in a personal capacity, said she had “felt so much less welcome” as a member since the leadership contest began.
Having attended the first hustings in Leeds last week, Bunbury said that “hearing everyone cheer at the talk of reducing trans people rights really sickened me” and there had been “vulgar and unnecessary” discussion of what should be a sensitive subject.
Asked if the contest had made her question her membership of the Conservatives, Bunbury said: “For the first time since I joined at 16, it really has. It makes me think: ‘How can I campaign for a party if the leader doesn’t respect a community that I am proud to be a part of?’”
Bunbury said in order to earn back trust, the candidates should not just offer “statements of support, or promises of acceptance”, but “concrete legislation that will continue to protect and champion the LGBT+ community”.
Other LGBT+ Conservative members who did not feel confident speaking publicly complained they felt “used to bolster someone’s credentials” but would be “discarded when no longer politically useful”. They said they wished Truss and Sunak had used the campaign to address patchy availability of the Monkeypox vaccine, reform of the Gender Recognition Act and the long-delayed promised crackdown on conversion practices.
With Truss appearing the frontrunner in polls of Tory members, one senior LGBT+ figure in the party said they believed the issue “will calm down” when the next prime minister is faced with “far more important and pressing challenges and doesn’t need to just play to the base”.
Truss was credited with having pushed back against Boris Johnson’s bid to block trans people being covered by the conversion practices crackdown.
But Ben Howlett, a former Conservative MP and member of the women and equalities select committee who now chairs a commission on LGBTQ+ rights, urged Truss to confirm whether she still believed trans people should be covered in the bill. “We haven’t had an answer yet,” he said.
“The trans community are very vulnerable,” he said. “Significant numbers of them have tried to take their own lives. So the idea that, in the middle of a campaign, you weaponise such a community to win votes is not conservative, it’s abhorrent.”
A Truss campaign source she and her supporters had “reached out to LGBT+ Conservatives, and have offered them a call to discuss any issues that impact them and Liz’s bold and ambitious plan for our country”. They added: “Trust is integral to Liz’s vision for leadership, and she hopes that she and her team will be able to make her case directly to LGBT+ Conservative members.”
Sunak’s campaign has been contacted for comment.
