Gay Brexit Party candidate: ‘We’re not all homophobic racists’
Louis Stedman-Bryce announcing that he will stand as a Brexit Party candidate. (Twitter)
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s newly-launched Brexit Party has said that he is “sick and tired” of the way leave voters are portrayed in the media.
Louis Stedman-Bryce announced his candidacy for the fledgling party on Thursday (April 25).
At a press conference in Manchester, he said: “Our democracy has been betrayed by the media’s portrayal of the type of person that voted for Brexit.
“The perception out there is that we’re white, we’re homophobic, we’re definitely racist and we didn’t know what we voted for.”
“I stand before you as a gay black man and I can definitely tell you I know what I was voting for when I voted for Brexit,” he added, to cheers.
“I stand before you as a gay black man.”
—Louis Stedman-Bryce, Brexit Party candidate
Stedman-Bryce, who works in the home care sector, will head up the party’s EU Parliamentary Election campaign in Scotland.
Journalist and men’s rights campaigner Martin Daubney—who in 2007 led a straight pride through central London—was also announced as a candidate at the Manchester event.
Martin Daubney (centre back) was also announced as a candidate at the Brexit Party press conference. (Twitter)
The pair join Ann Widdecombe, who was announced as the Brexit Party’s lead in the South West on Wednesday morning (April 24), and Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, a critic of LGBT-inclusive education programmes.
The UK will elect new members to the European Parliament on May 23, unless the government passes its EU Withdrawal Agreement with enough time to cancel Britain’s participation in the vote.
Despite having not yet announced any official policy beyond pursuing Brexit, a poll published on April 17 put the party ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.
Homophobic attacks rose post-Brexit vote
In the three months following the June 2016 referendum, the number of homophobic hate attacks doubled, according to the LGBT+ charity Galop.
Levels of violence continued to reach worrying levels throughout the following months, with some 11,638 homophobic crimes reported in 2017/8—a 27 percent increase on the previous year.
The Home Office said in a report: “This increase is thought to be largely driven by improvements in police recording, although there has been spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU referendum.”
Superintendent Waheed Khan, Scotland Yard’s deputy head of hate crime, has suggested that there could be another spike in hate crime when Britain eventually leaves the EU.
He told The Guardian in October: “If we look at what happened in the Brexit referendum then we would expect some kind of response at that time.”
