Braverman faces Tory backlash for calling Pride flag monstrous thing’

Suella Braverman's "divisive rightwing politics" make her unsuitable to lead the Conservative party, Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, has said, amid a backlash after the former home secretary said her party had been too liberal.

- Jessica Elgot, Peter Walker

A series of other Conservative figures attacked Braverman after she used a speech in the US to describe the Progress Pride flag as a "monstrous thing", saying she was angered when it was flown over the Home Office against her will.

"Our problem is us," she told the National Conservatism conference in Washington. "Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone's fault but their own. My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame." She added: "What the Progress flag says to me is one monstrous thing: that I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals and from our schools," she said.

Her comments appear to be an allusion to the prescribing of puberty blockers or to other medical procedures undergone by some people as they transition, though most are not available for children.

Such comments and Braverman's wider pitch to the party if, as expected, she joins the contest to succeed Rishi Sunak, have angered some Conservatives, and she has lost the support of MPs from the Tory right she might have expected to back her.