A former Tory MP has said the party forced her mother to undergo diversity training after she liked a social media post about illegal migration. The Telegraph has the story.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns said Tory HQ had sent her a 10-module course which included questions about different genders and sexualities.
The former Tory minister said party bosses had stripped her late mother Valerie, who at the time was almost 80, of her membership and would not restore it until she did the training.
The decision happened before Kemi Badenoch was made leader, and a Conservative spokesman said the party was “now under new management”.
Dame Andrea lost her seat at the election and has defected to Reform UK. She is now standing for Nigel Farage‘s party to become mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.
She told The Telegraph that Conservative HQ contacted Valerie in early 2020 about social media posts that she had liked five or six years earlier.
The posts are said to have been related to grooming gangs and calls to deport illegal migrants.
Dame Andrea said that her mother used a smartphone to scroll through social media sites and frequently liked posts by mistake.
She said this had included Valerie accidentally liking messages posted by the Labour candidate in her Morley and Outwood constituency.
Valerie was immediately suspended as a Tory member, meaning she could not attend local association gatherings in support of her daughter.
In an email sent to her in February 2021, an official from CCHQ wrote: “As you are aware, as part of a sanction you were issued under the party’s social media complaints rules, you are required to complete the following training course if you wish to rejoin the party when your suspension has finished.
“I encourage you to approach the training with an open mind.”
Dame Andrea said the course included questions on “everything to do with diversity you could possibly think of” including different genders.
She said that one question asked “what is a pansexual?” and added that she had spent two hours filling the answers out on behalf of her mother.
“I did the course for her because it was a matter of principle for me to get her back into the party with her daughter being an MP,” Dame Andrea said.
“To make a woman in her late 70s do a course like that, it’s a joke.
“She was upset because her daughter was a Conservative MP and she couldn’t even be in my association to vote for me.”
Dame Andrea said it took an 18-month battle to get her mother’s membership reinstated. Valerie died in December 2022.
A Conservative spokesman said: “The party is now under new management. We are the only ones holding this dreadful Labour government to account on the issues that really matter.”
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