Liz Truss made her remarks about having been hobbled by transgender and environmental activists in the civil service at a US event also attended by controversial rightwing figures, it has emerged.
The former prime minister was criticised over the weekend when she told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland she had been thwarted during her 45-day term in office by a small cabal within Whitehall.
It has now emerged that the roundtable event was also attended by a number of well-known figures from the fringes of global conservatism. They included Tommy Tuberville, a US senator who once refused to say white nationalists were racist, Hiroaki “Jay” Aeba, a representative of a conservative Japanese cult, and two allies of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
The revelations have intensified calls for the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to remove the Tory whip from Truss, who is already under fire for not criticising Steve Bannon during a separate CPAC event during which the former Trump adviser called the far-right figure Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) a “hero”.
Jonathan Ashworth, a shadow CabinetOffice minister, said: “It is anyone’s guess what Liz Truss thinks she is up to, but we now know that she is spending her time hanging out with a bizarre cast-list of far-right characters, while spreading conspiracy theories and refusing to challenge the idea Tommy Robinson is a ‘hero’.
“That Rishi Sunak still hasn’t withdrawn the Tory whip from his predecessor shows how weak he is. By allowing her to bring these divisive, deluded and dangerous views into mainstream British politics, the Tory party is poisoning public discourse.”
A spokesperson for Truss did not respond to a request for comment.
Truss’s trip to CPAC – one of several visits she has made to the US since leaving office just over a year ago – has caused problems for her in the UK. She has faced criticism for appearing on a platform with Bannon, a far-right strategist, and for alleging that she had to resign because of a plot by the “deep state”.
Her comments at the conference’s international summit were particularly controversial, where she told attenders: “People are joining the civil service who are essentially activists. They might be trans activists, they might be environmental extremists, but they are now having a voice within the civil service in a way I don’t think was true 30 or 40 years ago.”
Video footage of the event shows Truss spoke after Nigel Farage, indicating the greater celebrity status of the former Ukip leader on the American right. Other speakers included Miklós Szánthó, the director of a rightwing thinktank in Hungary with close ties to Orbán, and Szabolcs Takács, the Hungarian ambassador to the US.
The event was also addressed by Jay Aeba, a prominent Japanese conservative and representative of the Happy Science movement, whose followers regard their leader as the incarnation of a supreme being from Venus.
In the audience was Tuberville, the US senator, who when asked during an interview last year whether white supremacists were racist, replied: “Well that’s your opinion.”
