Also speaking days after the US vice-president, JD Vance, sparked anger by launching a scathing attack on western European democracies, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, bemoaned what he said were poll findings that only one in five British adults considered themselves to be very patriotic.
From Britain, attenders included Lois Perry, a former Ukip leader who is heading a new UK branch of a US climate change denial group, Heartland Institute, which has taken funding from oil interests and US Republicans.
Likening her own leadership to Donald Trump’s second term, she used a gathering of fellow conservatives to attack Keir Starmer for taking the knee in a nod to Black Lives Matter and described “pronouns, diversity policies and climate activism” as a “poison”.
While religion does not explicitly feature in promotional material for the event, there is a religious influence on its direction from Peterson, who draws on the Bible in his work, and his ARC co-founder Philippa Stroud, a committed Christian credited with shapingthe Conservative party’s policies during the 2000s.
Kemi Badenoch has said “our country and all of western civilisation will be lost” if efforts to renew the Conservative party and drive forward rightwing ideas globally fail.
