A Labour MP who received abuse for being gay when he was first elected almost 25 years ago has revealed he sees parallels in the way trans people are treated today with the attacks he suffered. Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw, who is standing down at the next election, spoke of the vitriol he faced on the 1997 General Election campaign trail and revealed his godson is trans, adding that the community faced "such a lot of anger, and prejudice, and bias" on a daily basis.
Speaking to Gloria De Piero on GB News, Mr Bradshaw, 61, said when he was running for Parliament voters were told their children would be in danger if they elected him due to his sexuality, and after he won his opponent had said "Ben Bradshaw is a disease-ridden, sterile homosexual who works for the BBC, speaks German, rides a bicycle, is everything about our country that is wrong".
"It sounds incredible now," said Mr Bradshaw, who said young people could not believe it when he told them of the attacks. "But in a funny kind of way, it helped me, because I think there was a kind of consensus – political consensus – particularly in some of the tabloid press and in the Tory party that the public wasn’t ready for gay equality.
