A former Conservative MP’s late mother was forced to endure diversity training and barred from the party after liking a social media post about illegal migration.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who has since defected to Reform UK, said that her mother, Valerie, was handed a 10-module “woke” course after liking the post – and was stripped of her Tory membership to boot.
Conservative HQ contacted Valerie in early 2020 about social media posts which she had liked as many as six years earlier.
The posts are said to have been related to grooming gangs and calls to deport illegal migrants.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns’s mother was forced to endure diversity training and barred from the party
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Jenkyns, now running to be the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, said that her mother used a smartphone to scroll through social media sites, and frequently liked posts by mistake – including posts by the Labour candidate in her former Morley and Outwood constituency.
Valerie, in her late 70s, was immediately suspended as a Conservative Party member – barring her from attending local association meetings in support of her daughter.
In an email from February 2021, one CCHQ official 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.”
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Jenkyns is now running to be the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire
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But the course included questions on “everything to do with diversity you could possibly think of” including different genders, Jenkyns said.
The Tory defector said she stepped in to take the course on her mother’s behalf and was forced to answer questions like “what is a pansexual?”.
“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,” she said.
‘The party is now under new management,’ a Tory spokesman said
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“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.”
It eventually took a year and a half to reinstate Valerie’s membership. She died in December 2022.
In a swipe at former party leaders, a Tory 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.”
