Readers, I have been to a few political conferences in my time. But none of them were as empty, miserable, or downright weird as CPAC GB. Having heard that Liz Truss was bringing the American conservative jamboree across the Atlantic, I felt obliged to go, and comforted myself that there would at least be a bar to flee to if it all got too grotesque. But there was no bar. Or at least there wasn’t until I discovered the secret pathway from the Intercontinental Hotel that emerged next to the O2’s Wetherspoons. Until then, being cursed with vision, hearing and sanity meant enduring an event that made Truss’s premiership look like a model of tact and foresight.
It was shallow, senseless and utterly detrimental to the conservative cause it claimed to champion
For the uninitiated, CPAC stands for Conservative Political Action Conference. In the US of A, it has been a staple of the right-wing calendar for decades, with would-be presidents, shock jocks and activists uniting to slap each other on the back about how marvellous assault rifles are and mutter darkly about abortion. As with the National Conservatism conference three years ago, this sort of Yankee politics is on a sticky wicket in Britain. We don’t do God; we find earnestness unappealing. To misquote David Bowie: we’re afraid of Americans, we’re afraid of the world.
That several of my friends had given up and headed back to Westminster before I’d even arrived didn’t fill me with confidence. But once I’d made my way out to the No Man’s Land of North Greenwich and breezed through the endearingly lax security, I was confronted by a ghost town. The main hall was three-quarters empty, even when my redoubtable chum Jacob Rees-Mogg was speaking. More people were staffing the stalls than trying their wares. The only two doing any trade were the patriots of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, since they were giving out free lighters, and a golf simulator. One bloke caused a queue when he unilaterally decided to enjoy a full 18 holes.
But who were the unlucky few who’d paid good money – a general ticket was £100, rising to £10,000 for the VIP option – to be at CPAC GB? Some were the same kooks you get at all these events, a collection of young European and American micro-celebrities filming each other for YouTube channels with names like RightNews4U and WestFightBackUnboxing, blankly demanding remigration now, remigration tomorrow and remigration forever while being unable to name the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But readers will be pleased to hear we have a few of these budding thought-leaders of our own.
I found myself sat behind an enormous chap who calls himself Young Bob. From what I can discern, his shtick seems to involve going to town centres, being a tad obnoxious and then getting beaten up by passers-by. If he enjoys that sort of thing, now he’s turned 18, it should be easier for him to find somewhere in Soho that performs a similar service for a reasonable fee and which doesn’t require him to make a tit of himself on the internet. Or just get a girlfriend.
Young Bob was but one of the conference’s youthful contingent. There were a lot of pale young men in Zara suits – there, but for the grace of God… – and blonde young women who ply their trade as TalkTV rent-a-gobs. I’ve always had disdain for these shameless grifters. For those of us who worked hard to get published in a prominent magazine, newspaper or blog at a young age, to know that these idle goons can attract a large audience just by saying whatever outlandish guff a producer asks them to is deeply depressing. But they are the children of Truss – the final boss of the right-wing entertainment industry.
Outside, there were quite a few police officers. I wondered how many burglaries, rapes or murders were going unsolved across the capital that day just because our worst ever Prime Minister – sorry Sir Keir, you don’t even get that – was still fighting for a sliver of relevance. When she appeared on stage, she was described as a ‘former MP’. That’s one way to list her. Others include ‘former Women and Equalities Minister’, or ‘former President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats’. Or even ‘a colossal national embarrassment who should never show her face in public again’. But I digress.
When she appeared on stage, the 49-Day Queen demonstrated the same emotional depth and ease at human interaction which characterised her time in No. 10. Interviewing an American bloke who looked like a Viking but apparently owns a string of Christian radio stations, she failed to make eye contact, staring blankly out into the audience, while he informed us that Jesus was the first viral content creator, who bypassed the biased mainstream Roman media to take his message straight to the Palestinian masses. Perhaps Truss was lost in thoughts of happier times, of strutting her stuff at the LGBT Tories disco. Where had it all gone wrong? Where were her Yimby twinks?
But Truss wasn’t the only star. There was a string of big names that corralled to speak from the aforementioned and superb Rees-Mogg, via our own Toby Young, to aspiring author Matthew Goodwin and Pauline Hanson, currently bidding to be Australia’s next Prime Minister. But the biggest ticket – the name that got enough people into the main hall that it didn’t look ghostly – was Nigel Farage. My colleague James Heale has written up his remarks, a pretty by-the-numbers condemnation of Burnham, the EU and ‘the establishment’. His explanation for why he’d called a by-election in Clacton wasn’t very convincing, but his tribute to Ann Widdecombe was moving. It’s always a pleasure to see a master of his craft, railing against a broken Britain, fighting to stop us from becoming a Third World country within a decade. Manchester, so much to answer for…
The audience lapped it up. But I couldn’t help but think of Harriet Jones, another ill-fated former Prime Minister. Didn’t he look tired? I’ve never been convinced that Farage really wants to go to No. 10. I’m not sure he has that iron in him. He always enjoyed campaigning, the adoration of the crowds, the battle against the uniparty. But he doesn’t look like he’s having that much fun. Part of him wants to lose that by-election.
I wasn’t invited to the black-tie dinner. From what I heard from those who were, a ‘Winston Churchill Award’ was given to a friend of a conservative icon whose recent death shocked and upset so many. Yes, of course: Charlie Kirk! A man next to nobody in Britain had heard of until his tragic death last year. Had the organisers not thought of Widdecombe? It summed up CPAC GB: Yankee-brained slop, barely repacked for a UK audience, stomach-churning to watch.
I love Britain deeply. I want a right-wing government, tackling the myriad structural challenges and self-imposed difficulties that have left us so reduced and so unhappy. But our salvation will not be found at the CPAC clown show. Shaped in Truss’s image, it was shallow, senseless and utterly detrimental to the conservative cause that it claimed to champion. Truss should be embarrassed. But as CPAC proved once again, she isn’t capable of that emotion.
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