Authorities in Brussels have ordered the closure of a radical right conference that was addressed by British politicians including Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.
Emir Kir, the mayor of the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode district in Brussels, said an order had been issued banning the National Conservatism conference from taking place on Tuesday “to guarantee public safety”.
Braverman took to the stage after police had arrived and said the event was being shut down.
Farage, who spoke before Braverman, claimed police had arrived to execute the shutdown order but had turned away because of the cameras.
Police told reporters that the scene that they would not be dragging people out of the venue but would not be letting anyone else in.
The venue was the conference’s third after others had cancelled bookings in the wake of interventions by local authorities.
Organisers told those at the event that the closure of the event would be “gradual” and that they intended to find a new venue for Wednesday.
Farage took the stage to tell those gathered that the owner was coming under pressure from the mayor and that the food for the event had not arrived.
“This is what we are up against. We are up against an evil ideology. We are up against a new form of communism.” Farage said as he gave a keynote address.
Rishi Sunak was urged at the weekend to stop Braverman, his former home secretary, from attending the rightwing convention featuring figures who have been under investigation for extremism.
Among others due to appear at the gathering is Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister and a key ally of Vladimir Putin.
In 2020 the Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski was reprimanded under Boris Johnson’s Conservative party leadership for attending a NatCon event in Rome, where Orbán was also a speaker.