Former Pride parade drag queen to stand for Reform UK in Salford by-election
Michael Felse (LinkedIn/Michael Felse)
A Doncaster politician who previously both stood as a mayoral candidate for the city and led the 2011 Manchester Pride festival as a drag queen has announced that he is standing for Reform UK in an upcoming Salford by-election.
Speaking to Salford Now on 25 March, Michael Felse said: “I have lived in Salford for 30 years. I was born in a Doncaster mining village. My first job from school was at the coal mine. I feel proud to be working class.”
Felse stood as an independent candidate in Doncaster’s 2009 mayoral election and for the English Democrats in Salford’s mayoral election in 2012, where he finished in eighth place with 3.6 percent of the vote.
READ MORE: Reform councils’ Pride flag bans condemned by unions
He also led Manchester Pride’s parade in 2011 as his drag alter ego Ethol Mary, who he described as “more like a Grimsby docker than Lady Gaga”.
He was reportedly selected to lead more than a hundred floats through the city after he was “dared” to enter the race to become the Parade Queen. As reported by the BBC in 2011, Felse said: “It’s considered to be an honour to be the Pride Queen and for some strange reason this year it is going to be me.”
When asked if he thought his appearance as a drag queen would make “politics look silly”, he said: “I don’t think I’ll be taken as a joke. It’s really important that we don’t suddenly think that everyone fits in one box, everybody is different but it is how do we engage those choices. I think it isn’t making politics silly, it’s saying, no, let’s have a bit of fun.”
Doncaster Free Press reported that Felse lamented that PinkNews readers criticised him for his move to Reform UK.
“Hundreds of online lefties on PinkNews attacked my honest opinion instead of facing up to the facts of left wing councils’ woke projects that waste millions,” he said. “They should instead give a council tax cut towards helping two million pensioners facing poverty.”
Felse has since ditched the drag, saying he is launching his “2026 new alter-ego to promote pride… butch Captain England, the look that fights for Diversity, Inclusion, Cohesion and Kinship – (D***)”.
He previously said on LinkedIn that he called “on all local councils to stop wasting money on Pride events which add little to any improved social cohesion”. He added: “Councils need to stop funding woke projects which are egotistical efforts to fool we council tax payers.”
Another post saw him write: “Gays are literally under threat from international immigration as some immigrants are from cultures that would kill gay people, including their own born.”
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