The Conservative chair of the London assembly was dragged out of Suella Braverman’s speech to the party’s conference on Tuesday, after he quietly complained she was delivering a “homophobic rant”.
Andrew Boff, the Tory leader in the capital, dismissed the home secretary’s speech as “trash”.
He was then led out of the hall by officials as he told them: “This is just a homophobic rant.”
Speaking to reporters as he was escorted out of the conference venue, Boff said he had been a “loyal Tory for 50 years”.
“It’s trash about gender ideology,” he said of Braverman’s speech. “It is making our Conservative Party look transphobic and homophobic. This is not what the Conservative Party is about.”
Braverman’s speech has already been interpreted as a pitch for the Tory leadership should Rishi Sunak lose the general election.
In it she took aim at Labou leader Keir Starmer for wanting to make Britain “woke”.
“We see it in parts of Whitehall, in museums and galleries, in the police, and even in leading companies in the City,” she said.
“Under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion, official policies have been embedded that distort the whole purpose of these institutions.”
“The British people will get to decide if they want to curb woke with Rishi Sunak. Or let it run riot with Keir ‘take the knee’ Starmer.”
Several other Tory cabinet ministers have already used their speeches to target trans people, including health secretary Steve Barclay.
It came after one backbench Tory MP warned his party to stop “fighting” the LGBT+ community and “demonising” trans people.
Elliot Colburn, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, told a meeting on the fringes of the conference to “drop this hardcore rhetoric and we have to drop it now”.
“I want to make one thing perfectly clear to our Conservative colleagues. We will not win the next general election fighting with the LGBT+ community,” he said.