Kemi Badenoch rants about Stonewall, pronouns and critical race theory at Tory event

Kemi Badenoch has accused LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall of being taken over by “leftist” ideas.

The women and equalities minister made the comments during a right-wing summit, where she said that the more “extreme ideas” of trans rights were defeated by the government.

“We started going down the wrong track on gender ideology because we allowed other people to tell the government what to do… ideas that came from the leftist point of view feeding into particular charities” Badenoch said.

“Stonewall is the best example of this [but] it’s not the only one.”

The charity is not “the same Stonewall of 20 or 30 years ago,” which advised the government on “what you need to do in order to serve a particular community”, she went on to say.

“Then it overreached and started giving people legal advice or advice that is certainly different from what the Equality Act says.”

Badenoch spoke to hundreds of conservatives during the three-day summit hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a right-wing organisation co-founded by Tory peer Philippa Stroud.

‘We need to stop getting distracted by pronouns’

The event was also attended by the new US House speaker, Mike Johnson, who has recently been urged to address his vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ past, and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

During a discussion with Freddie Sayers, the editor of the “gender-critical” publication UnHerd, Badenoch said she believed the UK had “turned” on “trans ideology.”

She also took the chance to attack pro-LGBTQ+ initiatives by businesses and institutions, saying: “This is coming out of academia, who don’t have to deal with the consequences of their flawed ideology. We can’t refight the battles of 100, 200 years ago, we have to deal with the battles of today.

“We need to stop getting distracted by pronouns, critical race theory and measuring people’s skin colours.”

A spokesperson for Stonewall defended its work in a statement to The Guardian, saying it aims to provide expert guidance to employers to help make sure LGBTQ+ staff are supported.

“Organisations are free to implement our guidance and make it work for their contexts,” the spokesperson said. “It’s not a question of right or left-wing thinking to unlock the potential of LGBTQ+ employees.

“We have never professed to offer legal advice and it is important to represent our work accurately.”