Brexit Party candidate 'sick and tired' of Leave voters being branded 'racist' and 'homophobic'

A candidate for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party has said he's 'sick and tired' of Leave voters being branded 'homophobic' and 'racist' by the media.

Louis Stedman-Bryce, a black openly gay man, announced his candidacy for the party on Thursday at a press conference in Manchester.

Speaking at the conference, he said:

Our democracy has been betrayed by the media’s portrayal of the type of person that voted for Brexit.

The perception out there is that we’re white, we’re homophobic, we’re definitely racist and we didn’t know what we voted for. 

I stand before you as a gay black man and I can definitely tell you I know what I was voting for when I voted for Brexit. 

Stedman-Bryce, who is a property investor, will head up the EU's Parliamentary Election campaign in Scotland, reports Pink News.

A number of other Brexit Party candidates were also announced at the event, including men's rights activist and former Loaded editor Martin Daubney, 48, who has even led a straight pride march through London.

Speaking at the event, he said:

I have never voted for Nigel. I have never voted for UKIP. I am not a Farage disciple. But Brexit has become my politics.

Ann Widdecombe, an ex-Tory MP who advocated that pregnant female prisoners should be chained up, was announced as the Brexit Party's lead in the South West on Wednesday, as was Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, a vocal critic of LGBT-inclusive education programmes.

Also announced was James Wells, formerly of the Office of National Statistics; pro-Brexit activist and opera singer Lucy Harris who claims that Brexiteers have been 'marginalised' and 'vilified'; Danish-born NHS dentist Henrik Overgaard-Nielsen; and Nigerian-born lawyer and daughter of two judges Elizabeth Babade.

According to Pink News, there was a spike in homophobic hate crimes in the three months following the Brexit referendum, with the number rising by 147 per cent compared to the same period of time the year before.

More than 3,000 allegations of hate crimes were made to the police, largely in the form of harassment and threats, in the week before and the week after the 2016 June 23 referendum, a year-on-year increase of 42 per cent.

The Brexit Party claims to have signed up more than 60,000 supporters and more than 175,000 online followers, as well as raising £75,000 in a month, reports the Guardian.

HT Pink News

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