Suella Braverman makes new attack on pro-LGBTQ+ police: ‘We don’t pay them to dance with drag queens’

Home Secretary Suella Braverman appears to have called out police officials who worked at LGBTQ+ Pride events, arguing that they are not paid to “wave flags” or “dance with drag queens”.

Braverman told the Commons that police chiefs and elected officials should focus on “cutting crime and rebuilding confidence, not playing politics.”

Suella, who has acted as a sort of ringleader of Britain’s culture wars as of late, had been responding to fellow Conservative Nick Fletcher on Monday (18 September), who claimed that police would solve more crimes if they “started putting more bobbies on the beat and stopped promoting unscientific ideologies.”

Piggybacking off of Fletcher’s comment, Braverman said, per The Independent: “My honourable friend is quite right. We pay the police to fight crime. Whether that’s a focus on anti-social behaviour, the nuisance bikers or burglaries, as he’s mentioned.”

“They are there to keep people safe. We do not pay them to wave flags at parades, to dance with drag queens or to campaign.

“That’s why I finally ended all association with Stonewall at the Home Office and why I expect all PCCs (police and crime commissioners) and chief constables to focus on cutting crime and rebuilding confidence, not playing politics.”

The Home Secretary’s harsh words come shortly after she ordered a review into the “political activism of police.”

Braverman announced earlier this month that there had been an “unacceptable rise” in police taking sides on major issues, from taking a knee and siding with the, as Braverman puts it, “highly political” Black Lives Matter movement to dancing along at parades and displaying the Progress flag.

“In all of these examples, public confidence was damaged by the sight of a supposedly apolitical police force siding with one group over another in a currently contentious area of public debate,” the controversial home secretary had claimed. “In all of these examples, the public’s respect for policing was eroded.”

It’s tough to see Braverman’s point when, earlier this year, an independent review into the Met police force found it to be institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic.

In a formal apology issued in June, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police apologised to the LGBTQ+ community for their past failings and promised to restore LGBTQ+ community liaison officers across the city.

After all of that, seeing the odd police officer associating with a Progress flag, or taking part in community Pride events might be a little encouraging for the public to see.

• Dec 31 2024

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