A prominent Conservative was ejected from the party’s conference after heckling Suella Braverman during the home secretary’s speech. Andrew Boff, a London Assembly member and former leader of the Tories in City Hall, was frogmarched out by security guards when he accused Braverman of homophobia and transphobia. Boff, who is gay, said from his seat in the main conference auditorium “there’s no such thing as gender ideology” after Braverman had criticised “gender ideology, white privilege” and anti-British history. Nearby attenders said he was speaking relatively quietly, and did not cause any major disruption. But security guards swept in and, as he was removed, Boff complained about the “trash” in Braverman’s address. Her speech was viewed as an effort to burnish her credentials with those on the right of the party. “It is making our Conservative party look transphobic and homophobic,” Boff remarked to reporters as he was dragged out. Afterwards, Boff told PA Media that Braverman “was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology”. He added: “It is fictitious. It is ridiculous. It is a signal to people who don’t like people who are LGBT+ people.
“Words like that in the forum of the party that I love need to be challenged.” Asked if he had planned the protest in advance, Boff said he attended the speech to “hear from her own mouth what her views were”. After Boff’s removal, Braverman tweeted that his heckles were “silly” but added: “I think he should be forgiven and let back into conference.” However, a Conservative spokesperson confirmed Boff had been asked to leave the conference and agreed to do so. Robert Buckland, a Tory MP who spoke to Boff immediately after his ejection from the conference on Tuesday, said heckling was “part of the democratic debate” at the annual gathering of activists.
He added Boff’s treatment by security staff was “heavy-handed”. Elliot Colburn, another Conservative MP who chairs the all-party group on LGBT+ global rights, said: “I don’t really blame him for doing what he did. “There’s a sense of frustration that Suella was the latest in a number of cabinet ministers who mentioned trans people in their speech. The government keeps repeating that they want to treat trans people with dignity and compassion; we need some demonstration of that now.” Other Tory MPs who wanted to remain anonymous said Boff’s treatment was “vile”.