Victoria Derbyshire gave Liz Truss’s old advisor a dressing down for the ages as his former boss spearheaded a new Tory faction aimed at galvanising the right wing of the Tory Party.
Truss has hit out at Rishi Sunak’s Government for failing to take on “left-wing extremists” she said had gained control of UK institutions as she argued her new movement must speak to Britain’s many “secret” Conservatives.
The former prime minister warned there was a “damaging divide” between politicians and ordinary people who “think the wokery that’s going on is nonsense”.
She was speaking at the launch rally of the new faction – dubbed the PopCons in Westminster – in central London on Tuesday.
The event also featured former Cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who declared that the “age of Davos man is over”, and ex-Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who used his speech to argue that Britons did not care about the net-zero emissions strategy.
The grouping aims to pile pressure on the Prime Minister to cut taxes, to adopt hardline policies on immigration and leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
In her headline address, Ms Truss said ministers shied away from measures promoted by the PopCons because they “don’t want to be unpopular”.
“The irony is that these policies are popular,” she said.
People wanted to see lower immigration and wanted illegal immigrants deported, she said, but ministers’ efforts were “constantly being stymied”.
“I believe the fundamental issue is that for year and years and years … Conservatives have not taken on the left-wing extremists,” she said.
And there we were thinking it was the Tories who have been in charge for the past 14 years!
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