Sunak urged to stop Braverman speaking alongside far right at Brussels convention

Rishi Sunak is being urged to stop his former home secretary from attending a rightwing convention featuring figures who have been under investigation for extremism, in the latest sign of his waning control of his party.

In 2020, Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski was reprimanded during Boris Johnson’s Conservative leadership for attending the NatCon event in Rome, where Orbán was also a speaker.

Also on the speakers’ list are Rod Dreher, an American writer who argued that the Christchurch mosque shooter who killed 51 people in 2019 did have “legitimate, realistic concerns” about “declining numbers of ethnic Europeans”; Ryszard Legutko, a Polish politician who has said he does not “understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a homosexual”; and Uzay Bulut, a Turkish political analyst who said that London “appears to be a striking case of the Islamisation of a major western capital through mass migration”.

She left the government in November after clashes with No 10, following her suggestion that being homeless was a “lifestyle choice” and writing an article that was critical of the police, without first having it cleared by Downing Street.

“The prospect of a senior Tory politician demeaning the great office she held, and the country she represents, shows just how far the once-great party of Churchill has fallen on your watch.

“We deeply regret that Edificio – which operates the Concert Noble where the conference is supposed to take place – tolerates such an event on their premises,” Camille, an activist at the Belgian Anti-Fascist Coordination (CAB) who did not give their surname, said in an interview with the Brussels Times.