Watch: Tory mayoral hopeful ejected for heckling during Braverman speech

A former Tory mayoral hopeful was ejected from Suella Braverman’s conference speech after accusing her of a “homophobic rant” over her comments on gender.

Footage shared on social media showed Andrew Boff, a member of the London Assembly, sitting in the main hall heckling the Home Secretary as she said: “Gender ideology. White privilege. Anti-British history.

“The evidence demonstrates that if you don’t challenge this poison, things just get worse.”

The Conservative politician interrupted Mrs Braverman during her address to the membership and said: “There’s no such thing as gender ideology.”

Mr Boff was approached by three members of staff who quietly spoke to him, as he is heard describing her comments as “a homophobic rant”. He was then escorted out by a police officer.

Mrs Braverman responded to the comments by writing on Twitter:

Mr Boff has previously declared he hoped to run as the mayor of London six times, and has sat on the London Assembly since 2008.

Following the incident, he said: “I’m a loyal Tory for 50 years. This trash about gender ideology is making our Conservative Party look transphobic and homophobic. This is not what the Conservative Party is about.”

Mr Boff again hoped to be selected as the Conservative candidate for the capital’s mayor this year, but did not make the shortlist.

He criticised Ms Braverman’s “ridiculous” language after his removal from the main hall.

He said: “This Home Secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology. It is fictitious, it is ridiculous.

“It is a signal to people who don’t like people who are LGBT+ people.”

He added: “Words like that in the forum of the party that I love need to be challenged.”

Asked whether he had planned protesting in advance, he said he decided to go to her speech to “hear from her own mouth what her views were”.

When interviewed earlier this year in The Telegraph, he voiced support for legalising cannabis and suggested he was supportive of gender self-identification.

On the subject of self-ID, when a person does not require a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to change their legal sex, Mr Boff said in April: “I did not need a medical check to find out that I was gay … why is it a trans person needs one?”