Out Singer Will Young Mulls Fleeing England if Conservatives Win Election

Openly gay British singer Will Young – the first winner of "Pop Idol," the British reality contest show that "American Idol" is based on – declared that if conservatives cling to power in next year's election, he will leave England, saying the country is becoming less safe for sexual minorities under Tory rule.

"Speaking from the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday (9 October), the singer said that the UK had become a hostile environment for LGBT+ people," British newspaper the Independent relayed.

Saying that a win by conservatives in the next election would be "too terrifying," Young pointed to comments by Suella Braverman, the British Home Secretary, who recently declared in an address to a conservative American group that LGBTQ+ people living in homophobic countries should not be considered for refugee status simply because their nations might have anti-gay laws on the books.

Braverman also "referr[ed] to migrants as a 'hurricane'," the Independent noted.

Braverman's comments echoed those made Sept. 26 by British Police Minister Chris Philp, who posited in remarks to the BBC that the convention is "being used by essentially economic migrants to try and claim asylum to move between countries".

Young told his listeners, "I feel scared when you see a Home Secretary stand up and pick on LGBT migrants and talking about hurricanes," the Independent reported. "They're picking on minorities, it's just terrifying. I don't think they're thinking about people in this country. They're just not solving the problems."

A basis for Young's fears isn't limited to the rhetorical realm of politics, but reflected in actual hate crime statistics, which have skyrocketed in recent years, "particularly in England and Wales, where police forces reported 124,091 hate crime incidents in 2020/21, an increase of around 81.8 thousand when compared with 2012/13," Statista noted in May of this year.

Statista went on to add that "the Metropolitan Police in London reported the highest number of hate crimes, with 24,291 hate crimes reported in the UK capital in 2020/21."

The Independent recalled that Young came out publicly more than 20 years ago, after winning the inaugural season of "Pop Idol" – but only because a tabloid newspaper had threatened to expose him as a gay man.

Since then, "I've seen a lot of improvements," Young said, citing marriage equality and other forms of legal parity for gay people.

"I've seen a lot of rights come my way, and now we are seeing a Conservative Party going for minorities," Young said. "I thought we'd got better.

"I'm not scared for my life, I'm scared for the country," Young added. "It deliberately creates a climate of fear."

Said the singer: "It makes me feel a bit scared as a gay man."

Young's worries lined up with warnings from some conservative politicians in England in the immediate aftermath of Braverman's comments.

Conservative London politician Andrew Boff, who, the Guardian noted, "is a patron of the LGBT Conservative group, spoke out against Braverman's words, saying, "Talking about the victims of persecution as if they are the problem is incredibly unhelpful and really paints us an an uncaring party.

"I'm deeply unhappy with it," Boff added, before offering a reminder that modern equality for LGBTQ+ people in Britain got a major boost from conservative governments in the past.

"We have a proud record when it comes to gay rights, on things like HIV and equal marriage," Boff said, adding: "I don't want us to become one of those parties like Fidesz" – a reference, the Guardian noted, "to Hungary's ruling party, which has become steadily more socially conservative and authoritarian."

England's more liberal party, Labour, also decried Braverman's words, with Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper saying that Braverman "has given up on fixing the Tories' asylum chaos at home so now she's resorting to grandstanding abroad and looking for anyone else to blame," Sky News reported.