Andrew Boff ejected from Tory Party Conference after heckling Suella Braverman over gender ideology

[IwantToRetire]

A senior elected Tory was ejected from the Conservative conference for heckling Suella Braverman as she railed against the “poison” of “gender ideology”.

London Assembly member Andrew Boff told reporters the Home Secretary had been “vilifying” gay people in her speech as he was removed from the Manchester convention centre on Tuesday.

Before being approached by officials and police, Mr Boff had said from his conference seat: “There’s no such thing as gender ideology.”

Ms Braverman later said the heckles were “silly” but said the politician should be “forgiven and let back into conference”, though Mr Boff said he had been stripped of his pass.

“This Home Secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology. It is fictitious, it is ridiculous,” he said.

More at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/suella-braverman-london-assembly-home-secretary-manchester-david-lynch-b2423216.html

Being cancelled for expressing a perfectly legitimate opinion should never be a storm in a teacup.

If I went to a stand-up comedy show and started shouting out distracting the audience from the comic could I use the excuse of cancel culture and freedom of speech for why I should be allowed to continue being a nuisance?

Being taken out of a room for being a nuisance is not "cancellation", real cancellation is when people have expressed an opinion and then lost their jobs, lost gigs, blocked off social media, media refusal to do interviews etc.

I doubt there is any legal "free speech" right to heckling, even if it was excessive by security.

You need to be able to kick people out if they cause too much of a disruption.

If heckling were a "right" it would probably undermine free speech because some people would deliberately try to destroy events with the amount of disruption they would cause.

"There's no such thing as gender ideology" while berating Braverman for being homophobic and transphobic is such a classic of the genre from reality deniers like Boff.

If he'd had his way, he, Blunt, May, Mordaunt, Millar, Nokes would have rammed Self ID thru Parliament with the help of Corbyn's Labour Party.

There would certainly have been only one ideology in town.

There's a time and a place for everything. Interrupting a main speaker at a party conference isn't the time.

Although according to you I could express a perfectly legitimate opinion at News at Ten studios when a presenter is reading the news. Nobody would get upset? I wouldn't be escorted out or cancelled?

PS, he wasn't cancelled 😉

I really tire of the wilful conflation of sex , including same sex attraction, and gender. it’s a big part of why we are in this mess. And they know what they are doing; It is totally disingenuous. So over it.

This is true, I've heard many TRAs use the excuse of free speech to shout down a feminist from speaking.

Hé was heckling, interrupting her scheduled speech, not asking a ( polite) question in the allocated time.

Do you think men shouting women down is ‘free speech’ ? Free for some, maybe.

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boff1
/bɒf/
INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN
verb

1. 1.
2. have sex with (someone).
3. 2.
4. hit (someone).

noun

1. 1.
2. an act or instance of having sex.
3. 2.
4. a blow or punch.

Have you not seen the video? He spoke to himself really. As in thinking aloud. I would not call it heckling but maybe the security did. It was strange how he was right in front of the cameras and close enough for a mic to pick up what he said though.

Here's the video for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. Yes he spoke out but it didn't interrupt anything.

https://twitter.com/PGMcNamara/status/1709218901312073895

I think that was an excessive reaction by security, unless he was repeatedly talking to himself and bothering other people in the audience.

Like someone talking in a cinema, that does need to be punished.

Security were exceptionally quick approaching him. Is the full video available or just the last few moments of his comments?

"“It is making our Conservative Party look transphobic and homophobic,” he told reporters."

If someone could just ask him to explain what homophobia is and what homosexuality is based on, he'd pretty much be slapped in the face with why it's an ideology.

Yes, that guy in the seats behind jumped up immediately. Must be more to it but I've not seen any other video, even though the cameras are all there filming everything. It does look staged tbh but I don't know by whom and for what purpose.

The Tories are split on this. As they are on most things.

All the comedy shows I have been to have had some members of the audience shouting out and heckling at times. and no one kicked out I suppose the difference is that comedians are intelligent and quick witted and perfectly able to cope with such things, whereas the Home Secretary is...

When newsrooms broadcast from College Green there are sometimes such interruptions, and no one gets moved on by the police...

Oh yes. That is odd. Whole thing looks odd

Unless there were loads of security or he had been making a much bigger fuss earlier and was in his last warning, that must have been a set up.

Presumably he set it up himself for publicity.

It does look odd.

If you think about question and answer part in an audience that size you can’t hear a word until the mic is there

For this there was a mic, camera and security after a spoken sentence

Must be set up surely

He's no Walter Wolfgang that's for sure.

The Tories covering both cheeks of their arse.