Nobody wants to go to Liz Truss's CPAC party

Short-lived former PM Liz Truss’s increasingly desperate attempts to stay relevant continue apace – but, alas, it seems she’s now too crackers for even her ideological fellow travellers to want to get involved in her latest endeavour.

Truss, who has been trying to reinvent herself as a right wing influencer in the US since her South West Norfolk constituents turfed her out at the last general election, has now been chosen by the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to lead a version of the event in the UK in July.

On stage in Texas on Monday night, while next to Matt Schlapp, commentator and chair of the event, the 49-day PM said she would be bringing the gathering of hardliners to Britain this summer, boasting she would be “bringing together conservatives from all parties” in order to save “woke” Britain from “terminal decline”.

Unfortunately for Truss, her involvement seems to have dissuaded precisely the sort of people one would expect to attend a British CPAC to turn down their invites before they have even been issued.

Nigel Farage, never one normally to snub a conference of US conservatives, has already passed, with a Reform spokesman saying: “We will be steering well clear of it.” A spokesperson for Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, said she has “no plans” to show up. And even Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister in Truss’s cabinet, is also understood to have no interest in making an appearance, despite having little else to do since his little-watched reality TV show was axed and GB News hours cut.

Not that it’s getting Liz down! A spokesperson for Truss said of Reform and the Conservatives: “Both parties will be invited to attend.” Truss herself, meanwhile, says: “What I’m now working on is how do we build the infrastructure. How do we build the equivalent of a MAGA movement – a MEGA movement. Make England great again.” (England, not Britain or the UK, note.)

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The latest humiliation for Truss comes as her successor-but-one as Conservative leader, Badenoch, appeared to think she didn’t even live in the UK anymore.

Asked why she didn’t kick Truss out of the Tories on Iain Dale’s LBC programme on Monday night, Badenoch said: “She’s not an MP. She doesn’t even live in the country.”

“She doesn’t even live in the country? Really?” said Dale.

“Well, does she?” responded Badenoch. “Because I don’t see her here. She’s always in the US. I assumed she’d moved. Has she not?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Dale.

“Oh, OK,” said Badenoch. “Well, maybe she does live here.”

Nothing says relevant like people not even knowing if you live in the country anymore!