Suella Braverman has been criticised after launching an outspoken attack on the LGBT community.
The former home secretary attacked the flying of the progress - or Pride - flag above government buildings, which she said represented “a horrible political campaign”.
She also hit out at the transitioning of young people, which she described as “mutilation” which left her “physically repulsed”.
Her comments, at a National Conservatism conference last night in Washington DC, will be seen as a pitch for right-wing support in the forthcoming Tory leadership campaign.
But it has already sparked a furious backlash from moderate Conservatives.
Braverman said: “We Tory ministers, nominally in charge of the system, completely failed.
“The progress flag flew over our buildings as if they were occupied territory. I actually asked, as a minister, ‘why is this happening, who says that it has to’, and could get no answer.”
Braverman added: “I couldn’t even get the flag of a horrible political campaign I disagreed with taken down from the roof of the government department I was supposed to be in charge of.”
The former home secretary then went on to hit out at the medical transitioning of young people.
She said: “The progress flag says one, monstrous, thing to me - that I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals.
“We Tories, right through our smoking ruin of a general election campaign, claimed that we were doing something about trans fanatics, when in fact what we did was let it happen.
“I am too physically repulsed to go into what ‘it’ is. But it is something that the true grown-ups in any civilised society should never have allowed to happen to their or anyone else’s children.”
Braverman went on to say that she was one of many Tories who “didn’t turn a blind eye to this, who weren’t somehow tricked by monsters seeking to mutilate children”.
Broadcaster and Conservative supporter Iain Dale was among those who condemned Braverman’s remarks.
Posting on X, he said: “What a disgusting speech. And she seriously thinks she has a chance of leading the Conservative Party. Not while I have a breath left in my body. Moderate Conservatives need to stand up and be counted. This will not stand.”