Conservative mayor Ben Houchen has described Suella Braverman’s recent tirade against LGBTQ+ Pride flags and trans healthcare as a “cack-handed” approach.

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC earlier this week, Braverman ranted about the trans-inclusive Progress Pride flag, which she described as part of “a horrible political campaign”, and gender-affirming care for trans youth, which she called “mutilation”. She also said she was “physically repulsed” by “trans fanatics”. 

Tees Valley mayor Houchen, who is the Tories only metro mayor following disastrous local election results for the right-wing party in May, condemned Braverman’s comments as not having “any room within the Conservative leadership contest”.

Braverman did “a very cack-handed thing of trying to convolute some very sensitive issues around gay rights as well, and Pride, which she convoluted with all the policy issues”, Lord Houchen, who became a life peer in 2023, said.

She got it “completely wrong,” Houchen, added. “I think she’s misjudged certainly the mood of the country, but I actually think she’s very much misjudged the mood of the Conservative Party.”

The party’s “road to redemption could be as long or as short as we choose to make it, and that would lead us into opposition for many, many years”, he predicted.

Labour vows to support the LGBTQ+ community where the Tories fell short

Labour’s general election landslide victory – propelling Keir Starmer into Downing Street as the UK’s 58th prime minister – meant a number of big-beast Tories lost their seats in constituencies up and down the country. 

Among the casualties were former prime minister Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Gillian Keegan, Andrea Jenkyns and Johnny Mercer, while Tory chairman Richard Holden managed to hold on by just 20 votes.

The number of Scottish National Party MPs was slashed from 48 to just nine.

The Labour manifesto contained promises to bring in a ban on conversion therapy, modernise and simplify the gender-recognition law and escalate all forms of hate crime to an aggravated offence.