LIZ Truss has claimed Britain is “full of secret Conservatives” as she said her party had failed to take on the “left-wing extremists”.
The former prime minister, Britain’s shortest-serving head of government, addressed the launch of a new Tory faction called Popular Conservatives at an event in Westminster on Tuesday morning.
During her speech, Truss claimed “the left” worked to “take over our institutions” and said the new faction – dubbed PopCon – was geared towards “galvanising Conservative forces” in society.
Her appearance at the event came as it was revealed she currently ranked as Britain’s least popular politician, according to research by polling firm Savanta.
The survey showed that 65% of voters had an unfavourable view of her, putting her behind Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
Unpopular Conservatives
Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, told HuffPost UK: “It is ironic that Popular Conservatism couldn’t find a more unpopular spokesperson if they actively tried.”
She hit out at the Government for allowing people to choose their gender and for “pandering to the anti-capitalists”, while ordinary people believed “the wokery that is going on is nonsense”.
“There is a damaging divide between those who are making the decisions – those in the elite within the M25 – and those people on the ground,” Truss said.
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“I’m afraid we have not taken on the left enough. And the left don’t just compete with us at the ballot box now, they also work to take over our institutions.”
She claimed “secret Tories” felt unable to express their true, right-wing political beliefs [in] public.
“Britain is full of secret Conservatives – people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it because they think it’s not acceptable in their place of work, it’s not acceptable at their school,” she said.
Among those in the audience were former home secretary Priti Patel, ex-chief whip Wendy Morton, former Tory Party chair Jake Berry, MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, Tory peer David Frost, and Nigel Farage (below).
The PopCons’ leader Mark Littlewood said it “isn’t about the leadership of the Conservative Party” or seeking to “replicate or replace” any of the existing right-wing caucuses of Tory MPs, but tackling quangos and bureaucrats who “share the same sort of leftist groupthink” and are “sneering about ordinary people’s beliefs”.
Littlewood earlier said the Tories can draw “important lessons” from Truss’s brief stint in No 10.
She lasted just 50 days in office after she was forced to quit as prime minister when her economic policies unleashed chaos on the markets.
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Littlewood, the outgoing head of the libertarian think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said the PopCons want to influence the Tory manifesto at the General Election.
Nigel Farage appearance
But Farage told the PA news agency: “I would agree with a lot of what is said on the platform this morning, but none of it is going to be Conservative manifesto policy.”
The arch-Brexiteer and Reform UK founder said the group represents “a very small minority within the parliamentary Conservative Party”, which is now “so far away from the centre of gravity of most Conservative voters, it is almost untrue”.
Farage quashed speculation that he is seeking to join the Tory Party “at the moment, given what they stand for”.
“I’d rather be part of Reform, because that’s the real thing.”
In his headline speech, Rees-Mogg (above) said: “The age of Davos man is over, of international cabals and quangos telling hundreds of millions of people how to lead their lives.”
He railed against the World Health Organisation, European Union and Cop climate summits, which he said “limit our freedom for manoeuvre”.
“We have to restore power to our democratic institutions and take it away from those that seek to override democracy,” the former Cabinet minister told the event.
Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain said: “This is not popular conservatism, it’s economic vandalism. Liz Truss and her fellow Conservative MPs crashed the economy, sent mortgages spiralling, then pocketed thousands of pounds in taxpayer-funded handouts. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
“The public will never forgive this chaotic Conservative Party for the damage they’ve done to people’s livelihoods and our country. The sooner we kick this Conservative government out of office, the better.”
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