The former PM addressed a packed Tory conference fringe this lunchtime as she took aim at a number of her Tory rivals.
Liz Truss has made the astonishing claim that the Conservative party would have performed better in the election if she had stayed on as leader after the mini-budget.
She made the prediction at lunchtime during her only public appearance at the Conservative party conference.
Speaking to a packed house of more than 300 loyalists, Truss argued that she would have led the party to a better result in July’s election if she hadn’t resigned.
But when asked if she would have won a majority, she balked, saying it was always going to be a tough election.
The Prime Minister has said for 49 days that Boris Johnson could have won the Conservative election and that the party’s big “stupid move” was to get rid of him in the first place.
She also attacked Theresa May, who last week wrote an article criticising Ms Truss’s tenure as one of the reasons for the election defeat.
Ms May wrote last weekend that “our reputation for economic policy competence has been gutted by the September 2022 Budget”. Asked how she would respond, Ms Truss laughed, shrugged and said: “I don’t know what to say about the 2017 election and our social policy!”
“I’m not getting into a fist fight with Theresa May.”
She then continued her fist fight with May, who accused her of being “part of the establishment”.
She warned that many Conservatives still mistakenly believe the great political division is along traditional right-left lines, when in fact it is “between the establishment and those who want fundamental change in our country”.
Liz Truss also refused to back the four Conservative leadership candidates, accusing them of refusing to talk about many of the biggest crises facing the UK.
Key issues she cited as talking points included her support for fracking, the repeal of the Human Rights Act, the repeal of the Equality Act, and the repeal of Tony Blair’s constitutional amendments to the judiciary and the Supreme Court.
She added: “They think we can just show our competence and then be brought back into power. They have to explain what they’ve done wrong, why the Conservatives are doing so badly and what they are actually going to do.”
At the start of the event she criticised the legacy of the Conservative government over the past 14 years, blaming them for not rolling back the socialist policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
She argued that Sir Keir Starmer is making things worse, but that the UK was already a socialist country when he won the election.
She was furious: “Many of the problems we face now are a result of our failure to turn things around.” She works in the private sector and is due to fly to Australia later this week to attend the Conservative party conference.
