Liz Truss’s attempt to import the raucous, pro-Donald Trump conference CPAC to London landed with a thud. The medium-sized ballroom was set up with 500 seats, but for most of the two-day event, bums filled only about a third of them. More turned out for Nigel Farage, Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but it was never a struggle to sit down.
Truss, who spent her time since being ousted as prime minister reinventing herself as an anti-establishment right-wing disruptor, helped launch the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference GB in south-east London on Thursday. She has spent her 49 days in No 10 blaming the “economic establishment” – the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility – for the market meltdown triggered by her ill-advised mini-Budget.
“Liz Truss's CPAC GB conference in London drew sparse crowds as Nigel Farage headlined the event.”
Despite Truss being the host, Farage was clearly the headliner. He rocked up on Saturday afternoon, delivering the first speech of his Clacton by-election campaign to the small room of right-wingers. Truss has perhaps been at her least self-aware since leaving Number 10. Across various appearances on stage, she moaned about the frequent turnover of British prime ministers, predicted Andy Burnham would crash the economy, and accused her own party of having been “ideologically captured” by “DEI”.
There were moments of levity. Truss tried her hand at a golf simulator, later admitting she wasn’t very good. Reform UK’s Andrea Jenkyns told a preposterous anecdote about showing her son Little Britain and Father Ted, claiming he’d laughed his head off before asking: “Mummy, why don’t we laugh like this any more?” Jenkyns said she replied: “Unfortunately, you can’t show these things in schools… at the moment.”
Truss has long pictured herself as Britain’s answer to Donald Trump, although she acknowledged her dream of a “Trump-style revolution” was a work in progress. She has popped up in America speaking at conferences alongside Trump, JD Vance and the wider Maga movement. Now, by bringing CPAC to London, she appears to be laying the groundwork for a comeback. Asked whether she was ruling out a return to frontline politics, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister declined to answer.
