Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, told a rightwing conference in the US that her country was “failing” and needed a Donald Trump-style “Maga” movement to save it.
Truss was speaking on Wednesday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland, alongside rightwing populists from around the world planning deeper ties and cooperation.
“We now have a major problem in Britain that judges are making decisions that should be made by politicians,” the ex-prime minister said, claiming that the judiciary is “no longer accountable” because of reforms by her predecessor Tony Blair, who gave power to an “unelected bureaucracy”.
She continued: “There’s no doubt in my mind that until those changes are reversed, we do not have a functioning country. The British state is now failing, is not working. The decisions are not being made by politicians.”
Truss, who was prime minister for only 49 days and lost her seat in last year’s general election, has become an increasingly marginal figure in British politics but found safe harbour at CPAC, a once mainstream conservative gathering that has embraced Trump’s brand of nativist-populism.
Voters are increasingly angry, she claimed, because they keep voting for change only to be disappointed, including in the current prime minister, Keir Starmer. “The same people are still making the decisions. It’s the deep state, it’s the unelected bureaucrats, it’s the judiciary.
“And I think what ultimately will happen, what I hope to see, is a movement like you have in the US with Maga [Make America great again], with CPAC, with all these organisations, that ultimately pushes change we all want. We want to have a British CPAC.”
Matt Schlapp, the longtime CPAC organiser who has previously exported the brand to countries including Argentina, Australia and Hungary, replied: “It’s a deal!”
The head of CPAC Hungry, Miklós Szánthó, was also present at Wednesday’s “international summit” and reminded the audience that political strategist Steve Bannon had once described Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as “Trump before Trump”.
Szánthó earned applause from the audience by declaring: “Hungary is the island of freedom in the liberal ocean of Europe.”
He said: “We might be even more thrilled about the return of Donald J Trump to the White House than you are … I am sure that this world will be a better place for true conservatives and true Hungarians with Donald J Trump in the White House.”
Railing against “wokeness”, he urged: “My point is that American and European conservatives should join forces … in order to keep up the fight.”
Bannon, a podcaster and longtime Trump adviser, thanked CPAC’s organisers for standing by Trump in the wake of his election defeat and the 6 January 2021 insurrection when, he said, the Republican party and the conservative Fox News channel abandoned him.
But he also pushed deep state conspiracy theories as he warned that, despite Trump’s electoral comeback and blitz of executive orders over the past month, the struggle against liberal forces continued. “If you look at our partners and look at the parties and the politicians and the youth and the grassroots movement throughout the world, Europe, South America, Central America, Asia, it’s now our time,” he said.
“This is when it’s going to be the hardest because they’re not going to sit there and go, OK, we see what you guys want to do, you’re about liberty and freedom. They’re not about liberty and freedom.
“They’re about controlling the most powerful apparatus in the United States and in all these other countries in world history and they’re not going to give it up unless we take it from them. And when we take it from them we then have to execute on that to make sure we deliver on the promise of liberty and freedom and that is a grind every day of the week.”
Officials from countries including Australia, Japan, South Korea also took part along with Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence under Trump.
Schlapp closed the session with a resolution on “globalism” to which all assented. It read: “The countries, organisations and activists assembled at this, the second annual CPAC international summit, join our voices in opposition to the globalist cabal represented at the EU, the São Paulo Forum, the UN, the WHO and the World Economic Forum and myriad other organisations funded by leftist elites.
“These self-anointed global elites are not only anti-democratic; they have been wrong on every major national and international issue for decades. We wish to thank God for giving society a second chance with the election of President Trump. Each blue binder holding a Trump executive order represents a bold step toward reclaiming freedom and common sense in America’s constitutional republic.”
Schlapp added: “As America heals from its four-year experiment with socialism, the world improves. Iran will be weakened and denuclearised. China will be countered and cut out of our digital infrastructure. Criminal gangs will be policed and jailed and human traffickers will be shamed and sentenced. We applaud President Trump’s courage, leadership and resilience. Together, we stand ready to assist him in every step along the way.”
CPAC is scheduled to hear from the vice-president, JD Vance, on Thursday and Trump on Saturday.