Suella Braverman has attacked the Progress Pride flag and said the Conservative government she was part of “presided over the mutilation of children”.
The former home secretary criticised the ousted Tory government for flying the Progress Pride flag, which represents the LGBTQ+ community and calls for a more inclusive society.
She also accused the Conservative government of allowing children to transition to a different gender.
“Far, far too many Tory politicians agree, and still agree, that the Progress flag must be flown to be kind, to be inclusive,” she told the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC.
“It shows how liberal and progressive we are, and that’s what many Conservatives want to be.
“The Progress flag says to me, it says to me 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.”
The outspoken politician, who is among the likely candidates to succeed Rishi Sunak as Tory leader, was applauded by the audience at the conference organised by Dutch conservative group The Edmund Burke Foundation.
Ms Braverman also reportedly called the Progress Pride flag part of “a horrible political campaign” and said she failed because she could not get it taken down from government department roofs.
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And she said she was “physically repulsed” the Conservatives claimed they “were doing something about trans fanatics when, in fact, what we did was let it happen”.
The ex-minister, who was re-elected as an MP, blamed her party’s defeat on failures to keep their promises and said they had taken a “good hiding”.
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The Progress Pride flag was developed in 2018 by non-binary American artist and designer Daniel Quasar.
It is based on the iconic flag from 1978 that evokes a rainbow, a symbol of hope.
Quasar redesigned the flag to represent other minority communities.
He added black, brown, light blue, pink and white stripes in the shape of an arrow on the left of the flag to place discriminated minorities at the forefront.
The light blue, pink and white stripes represent trans and non-binary individuals, while the brown and black ones represent the communities of people of colour.
The black stripe has a double meaning as it is also intended for those living with AIDS, the stigma and prejudice surrounding them, and those who have been lost to the disease.
After posting the new design on social media in 2018, it went viral and has been widely adopted by the LGBTQ+ community.
“We won a great majority in 2019 promising to do what the people wanted,” she said.
“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.
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“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.”
Ms Braverman will speak via video link on Tuesday to a Popular Conservatism post-election event alongside Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost aimed at figuring out what went wrong.
