Nigel Farage to snub US conservative conference brought to UK by Liz Truss

Exclusive: Reform UK will be ‘steering well clear’ of CPAC event in July, source says, as will senior Tories

Nigel Farage will snub a major conference of US conservatives that is being brought to the UK by Liz Truss.

The short-lived former prime minister, who was accused of crashing the economy, was chosen by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to lead a version of the event in the UK in July.

She announced this on stage in Texas on Monday while next to Matt Schlapp, commentator and chair of the event, which in the US has hosted major figures including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tulsi Gabbard and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

However, mainstream conservative figures in the UK seem wary to be associated with the Truss-led event.

“We will be steering well clear of it,” a Reform UK source said, dashing any hopes that Farage would attend.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Conservative and former minister in Truss’s cabinet, is also understood to have no interest in making an appearance.

A spokesperson for Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, said she has “no plans” to show up.

Tim Montgomerie, a prominent Reform supporter, wrote on X: “From LibDem to Cameroon to Tory Right and now to what is actually the fringe of American conservatism, Liz Truss is just a grifter. She’s now gone to the only place on the political spectrum that’s mad enough to invest in her. We see you Liz, we see you.”

Truss has boasted she will be “bringing together conservatives from all parties” in order to save “woke” Britain from “terminal decline” for the event in London on 16-18 July, with tickets on sale from Wednesday 1 April.

She will be hoping she can emulate the US success of CPAC, which was founded in 1974 and hosted Donald Trump in 2011, an appearance said to have kickstarted his popularity with the Republican party.

While Farage has attended the US CPAC in the past, he appears to have no intention of going to Truss’s version. He has attempted to distance himself from the unpopular and short-lived prime minister, despite recently eating a discreet lunch with her in a private Mayfair club.

Photographs of the lunch posted on social media by Lois Perry, a former leader of the far-right Ukip party who is now the Europe director of the Heartland Institute, were swiftly deleted. A Reform spokesperson said at the time: “Liz Truss would not be welcome in Reform UK.”

She appears undeterred by this, and said: “What I’m now working on is how do we build the infrastructure. How do we build the equivalent of a a Maga movement – a Mega movement. Make England great again.”

A spokesperson for Truss said of Reform and the Conservatives: “Both parties will be invited to attend.”

The spokesperson declined to name any of the “major conservative figures” who will be attending the conference and told the Guardian that names will be announced “in the coming weeks and months”.

Truss has fallen foul of prominent conservatives recently because of her alleged behaviour on London’s social scene. She became persona non grata at a top Tory haunt – the exclusive members’ club 5 Hertford Street – after irritating its owners by wandering the premises in search of members to poach for her own rival club just one street away, which asks “founding members” for an eye-watering £500,000.