Exclusive: Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss to Speak at CPAC

Liz Truss
OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year, Breitbart News can exclusively reveal.

Truss, who’s served as the UK’s prime minister for 50 days from early September to late October 2022, will address the annual gathering of conservatives just outside the U.S. capital of Washington, DC, in late February.

CPAC, which is hosted by the American Conservative Union (ACU), will be held at the Gaylord Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, from Feb. 21 to Feb. 24.

Sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that Truss’s address comes amid a focus from conservatives here in the United States on international victories for the right that have come worldwide in places like South America, Asia, and Europe.

Truss succeeded former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and was eventually succeeded by current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. A Tory, Truss is still a Member of Parliament in the U.K. from South West Norfolk.

European Parliament elections this year, among other major elections scheduled worldwide, could swing international power centers away from leftists and toward conservatives. In late December, Foreign Policy magazine published a piece warning leftists that the west could see a conservative sweep worldwide in 2024—something that has now begun with Taiwan’s election of its new president and is set to continue throughout the year if the trends it explains hold.

The article, which argues that conservative populism is dangerous, warns that the upcoming European Parliament elections in the summer of 2024 could be the “most explosive moment” this year on the world stage when it comes to the right’s return to global power.

“This reshuffling of the Euro-pack, which happens once every four years, was always seen in the United Kingdom as an opportunity to behave even more frivolously than usual,” Foreign Policy’s John Kampfner wrote. “In 2014, the British electorate, in its inestimable wisdom, put Nigel Farage and his U.K. Independence Party in first place, setting in train a series of events that, two years later, led to the referendum to leave the EU. Having seen the damage wrought by Brexit, voters in the remaining 27 EU member states are not angling for their countries to go it alone. However, many will use the opportunity to express their antipathy to mainstream politics by opting for a populist alternative. Some might see it as a low-risk option, believing that the European parliament does not count for much.”

British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid during a bilateral meeting at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at United Nations General Assembly Hall on September 21, 2022 in New York City. The Prime Minister is visiting New York for the UN General Assembly general debate where she will make her speech to the Assembly on Wednesday. (Photo by Toby Melville - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

File/British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid during a bilateral meeting at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at United Nations General Assembly Hall on September 21, 2022 in New York City. ( Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty)

Kampfner argued that it is “entirely possible” that the “various forces of the far right could emerge as the single biggest bloc.”

“This might not lead to a change in the composition of the European Commission (the diminished mainstream groupings would still collectively hold a majority), but any such extremist upsurge will change the overall dynamics across Europe,” he added.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, the likely GOP nominee in 2024, has cheered on international conservative populist victories. In an interview with Breitbart News at Mar-a-Lago in late December, Trump said the sensation sweeping the planet is “essentially a MAGA-Trump movement.”

“It’s a Trump movement,” he said.

Trump was particularly pleased with Argentina’s new president Javier Milei’s victory there.

“The Argentina guy said the greatest guy in the whole world is Donald Trump. He called me right after he won. I had never spoken to him. He called me to thank me,” Trump told Breitbart News. “I said, ‘Oh, why do you want to thank me?’ He said, ‘Your policies paved the way for this.’ He’s got everything. He called me the night he won the election and he thanked me very much—he thanked me profusely. It’s called ‘Make Argentina Great Again.’ He’s got MAGA hats.”

CPAC, one of the conservative movement’s biggest annual gatherings dating back decades, has long placed a focus on international conservative victories—but sources familiar with the matter say this year organizers are likely to go even further on that front. More on this topic will likely be forthcoming soon.

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