The Claridge hall in Brussels was the third venue the National Conservatives had asked to host their 2024 conference, which took place between 16 and 17 April. The organisers of NatCon said that anti-fascist groups had pressured two other venues to pull out from hosting the event. It was uncertain whether the conference could go ahead at all. By late morning on its first day, the local Socialist Party mayor Emir Kir had prohibited the gathering, declaring the “far right is not welcome”. The Brussels police were on their way.
The National Conservative Conference brings together right-wing thinkers and politicians who view modern society as a narcissistic, failed experiment that has uprooted citizens from their national identity. Their last conference in 2023, however, was a Tory Party knife fight. In Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre, libertarian Thatcherites such as Jacob Rees-Mogg collided with Michael Gove and Lee Anderson, the erstwhile Tory party chairman and professional soundbite who has since defected to Reform.
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