Brexit Party candidate Alka Sehgal Cuthbert criticised LGBT ‘indoctrination’ in schools
Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert speaks at the launch of the Brexit Party on April 12, 2019 in Coventry, England. (Matthew Lewis/Getty)
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, is a critic of LGBT+ inclusive education programmes.
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert was selected as a candidate for the single-issue Brexit Party, which was formed by ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage to stand candidates in the May 23 European Parliament election after a delay to Brexit.
Polling suggests the Brexit Party could be set to win dozens of seats in the European Parliament, but the party lists no official policies beyond pursuing Brexit and its candidates’ views have had little scrutiny.
Brexit Party candidate Alka Sehgal Cuthbert criticised inclusive education
In a 2017 column for right-wing website Spiked, Cuthbert, a part-time English teacher and educational consultant, slammed education watchdog Ofsted for “forcing a religious school to include homosexuality in the curriculum.”
Cuthbert also criticised the LGBT+ inclusive No Outsiders programme run at schools in Birmingham, writing: “Educators are behaving like indoctrinators, and pushing an anti-Enlightenment, particularist line.
“Rather than promoting inclusivity, this fetishisation of diversity actually reifies personal difference.
“Teaching kids to be careful about protected characteristics or supposedly vulnerable social groups is anti-universal – it encourages kids to see their peers as different to them on the basis of gender, race or sexuality.”
EU elections candidate questioned prevalence of homophobic bullying in schools
Cuthbert penned another Spiked column on No Outsiders in February 2019, in which she questioned how prevalent homophobic bullying is in schools.
The candidate wrote: “What incidents of homophobic or transgender bullying have occurred that merit such a curricular intervention? What horrors have occurred that would warrant teachers explicitly teaching primary school-aged children about homosexual relationships and transgender identity?
“Do they have evidence that, without programmes like No Outsiders, children would be full of hate, tearing into anyone who was different to themselves?”
Addressing protests against inclusive education at Birmingham’s Parkfield primary school, she wrote: “It seems to me that these parents know very well what the school is trying to do: teach their children to regard homosexual relationships as the moral equivalent of heterosexual relationships.
“The parents just do not agree with the school.”
British politician and The Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage addresses the first public rally of their European Parliament election campaign in Birmingham, central England on April 13, 2019. (Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty)
She wrote: “It seems councillor Idrees [a local councillor who initially supported the protesters] encountered the limits of tolerance set by those who claim to be tolerant.
“I have some sympathy. At the Festival of Education in 2017 I was met with gasping, eyeballing, tut-tutting when, at Andrew Moffat’s presentation on No Outsiders, I argued that children should read books with great literary qualities, rather than books whose sole merit is that they represent gay and transgender people.”
The Brexit Party did not respond to a request for comment from PinkNews.
It is not the first time a party associated with Nigel Farage has faced questions over its candidates’ views on LGBT+ rights.
As leader of the UK Independence Party until 2016, Farage was forced to suspend dozens of candidates for homophobic comments, though in many cases the party was accused of failing to act.
