Having pocketed an estimated £8 million since being forced out of Downing Street, Boris Johnson will next week take a break from the lucrative US corporate speaking circuit. Alas, it is only to take his place among a roster of speakers at a gathering of some of the most hard right figures from politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Johnson is billed as a star speaker at a London gathering of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, an international network of right wing activists which aims to “relay the foundations of our civilisation”. The PM who once summed up his politics as “a Brexity Hezza” in reference to Michael Heseltine’s one-nation views will share a stage with some of the more extreme right wing figures from the US, UK and beyond.
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Other attendees at the conference, for which tickets cost up to £1,500 for three days, include Reform leader Nigel Farage and the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch. But others will represent some of Europe’s very far right, including the Alternative for Germany – designated as a “suspected extremist” organisation by intelligence services – as well as the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, Vlaams Belang from Belgium, Spain’s VOX and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.
They are expected to be joined by more than 40 UK parliamentarians, including Conservative peer and Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen and former Johnson-era minister Esther McVey, still an MP. Gaffe-prone Reform MPs Sarah Pochin, last seen struggling to stifle a laugh over domestic violence, and Andrew Rosindell, the oddball who campaigns for the BBC to play God Save The King when it closes down each night (something which it has not done since 1997), will also speak.
Attendees from the US will include Mike Johnson, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, and Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation think tank. The Heritage Foundation was responsible for co-ordinating Project 2025, a radical right-wing policy blueprint published ahead of the last US presidential election.
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The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is run by Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, who founded the network in 2023 with vegetable-dodging Canadian conservative pundit Jordan Peterson and – and you might want to sit down for this one – the owners of GB News: hedge fund manager Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based investment group Legatum.
Might it be an opportunity for Marshall to check in when his most high-profile signing is planning to clock in for his first shift? Johnson announced in October 2023 that he was joining “this remarkable new TV channel” as a “presenter, programme maker and commentator”. More than two-and-a-half years later, he’s yet to be seen in the broadcaster’s Paddington studios.
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