CPAC London stages the new conservative international, with One Nation's Pauline Hanson as guest of honour

Two Australian politicians arrived at a London stage on the evening of 18 July 2026 and, in the space of an hour, sketched the outline of a transnational project. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told the CPAC London crowd she was "sick of hearing about white privilege" and said she "fears for England." Within minutes, Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie told the same audience that conservatives around the world are "at war against leftwing globalists," echoing remarks Hanson had made earlier in the day. The event, hosted by the US-aligned Conservative Political Action Conference at a London venue, was promoted as a meeting of the global right; in practice it functioned as a launchpad for a particular Australian brand of populist nationalism onto a UK stage, with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage already drawing the parallel between Hanson's polling rise and Donald Trump's 2024 US victory.

The thread matters less for what was said than for who was saying it, where, and to which audience. CPAC has spent four decades building an American movement-conservative brand; the London expansion is its bet that the next decade of right-wing politics will be transnational, populist-nationalist, and media-native. Australia is now part of that story in a way it was not before the 2025 federal election.

What was actually said

Hanson's set was short and pointed. She told the London audience she was "sick of hearing about white privilege" and voiced anxiety about the direction of English politics, language that tracks her domestic messaging on immigration and cultural grievance. According to reporting from the event, Farage introduced Hanson by comparing the trajectory of One Nation's polling to Trump's 2024 win, framing her not as an Australian curiosity but as a movement peer.

McKenzie, a senior figure in the junior coalition partner of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government, went further in ideological register. Her claim that conservatives worldwide are "at war" against "leftwing globalists" is the kind of phrase that reads as applause-line rhetoric inside the room and as a coded manifesto in the transcript. It also puts her at odds with the more cautious positioning of the Australian government on questions of liberal internationalism and alliance politics, where Labor's framing of the world order remains broadly conventional.

The counter-narrative from inside Australia

The Australian reaction arrived within hours. Labor figures publicly criticised Hanson's remarks as divisive, and the broader response from mainstream Australian conservative commentary treated the London appearance as a miscalibration: a domestic politician reading a US movement playbook to a UK audience that does not share Australia's particular settler-colonial anxieties, and doing so under a foreign-party banner. The framing on Australian talk radio and in the major wire copy was that Hanson had overreached, importing US-style culture-war rhetoric to a country where the political centre has, so far, held.

That framing is plausible but incomplete. Hanson's domestic polling has been climbing through 2026; she is not speaking to a shrinking audience. The London appearance was less an overreach than an audition. Farage's explicit Trump comparison was a receipt for what she was selling: the idea that populist-nationalist politics is now a transnational growth market, with London as its clearing-house.

What CPAC London is for

Read against the wider movement, the event sits inside a longer project. CPAC's US operation has spent two years aggressively internationalising, holding events in Budapest, Jerusalem, Seoul, and now London. The London edition is not a UK conservative party event; it is a US-branded platform that hosts whichever right-wing figures across the OECD world can deliver a movement-conservative crowd. Farage is a natural fit. Donald Trump Jr. and senior Heritage Foundation figures have headlined previous editions. Hanson's invitation signals that the brand now treats One Nation as a peer of European right-populism rather than as an Australian side-show.

The structural bet is that the constituency for this kind of politics is no longer contained by national party systems. Immigration restrictionism, suspicion of multilateral institutions, hostility to DEI frameworks in the private sector, and a particular reading of family and gender politics are sold as a single package. A senator from regional Victoria speaking at a London stage about "globalists" is the package in action.

What remains contested

The sources do not specify the venue, attendance figures, or whether the event was open to credentialed press beyond pool coverage. Hanson's exact phrasing on "white privilege" appears only in paraphrased wire copy; the full video was not published in the thread items reviewed. McKenzie's "war" framing is also reported in summary rather than direct transcript. That matters: the difference between a literal call to political combat and a rhetorical flourish is doing work in the domestic Australian reaction.

There is also no reporting in the available material on whether any UK Conservative Party figures attended or distanced themselves, which is the obvious next question for a story about Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in London during a Conservative Party leadership cycle. The Australian government's official response, beyond Labor backbench criticism, is not in the thread items. Both gaps are worth watching.

What to watch next

Three dates will tell us whether the London appearance was a moment or a turn. One Nation's next published national polling will show whether the international platform translates into Australian primary votes; the next CPAC London speaker list will show whether the UK Conservative Party's leadership contenders treat the brand as safe ground; and the Australian federal parliament's next sitting will show whether McKenzie's "war" framing survives contact with her own coalition's foreign-policy spokespeople. None of those are settled by one London evening, but the direction of travel is now legible.

Desk note: Monexus treats this story as a transnational political-organising story, not a culture-war item. The reporting leans on the wire summary from the event itself, paired with the Australian domestic reaction that followed within hours. Where the available material paraphrases rather than quotes directly, the piece flags it.