LIZ Truss “hates” her own policy promising a ban on LGBT+ conversion therapy, a key ally has suggested.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who is working as the director of Truss’s leadership campaign, suggested she was likely to U-turn on the pledge to ban conversion therapy, according to reports in OpenDemocracy.
In October 2021, the Foreign Secretary boasted of the UK being “a global leader on LGBT+ rights [that] is committed to banning the coercive and abhorrent practice of conversion therapy”.
However, standing in for Truss at an event hosted by the Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF) on Tuesday, Duncan Smith suggested both he and Truss actually “hated” the idea of banning it.
OpenDemocracy quoted the Tory MP as saying of a conversion therapy ban: “I hate it. Can I be clear about that? I think when you start banning things like this you enter a maze of problems. And I absolutely believe that Liz is very much there.
“People are allowed their beliefs. You may not agree with them all the time. But the idea you ban them from this is this kind of ghastly woke culture ...
"I think this is a trap for politicians to head down and it will just make life worse. So Liz is strong on all this woke stuff. And I think she will certainly take the same view as I and many others do.”
Earlier this year, Boris Johnson performed two U-turns in the space of a single day on his policy on conversion therapy.
He first planned to drop a ban on the practice altogether – going back on previous Tory policy.
However, Johnson soon U-turned and backed a ban on conversion therapy for LGB people – excluding trans people – after a backlash from MPs and ministers.
The flip-flopping led Iain Anderson, the Tories’ LGBT business champion, to quit. He said his role was “not LGB or T, and that’s why I’m walking away”.
In April, the British Medical Association said conversion therapy was “unethical and damaging” and should be banned in all its forms including for trans people.
Liz Truss’s campaign was approached for comment.
