Liz Truss: I would have won more seats than Rishi

There are noticeably fewer people here at Tory conference in Birmingham this week. But one former MP can still reliably pack in the punters. Despite losing her seat in July, the ‘Liz Truss show’ shows no sign of any drop in enthusiasm, with some 300 conference attendees packing out a lecture theatre for a blast of sound thinking. A further hundred Tories were turned away at the door: proof, some say, that two years after her defenestration, Liz Truss is still yet to lose her appeal.

The former Tory premier was here this afternoon to do her sole event of the conference: a Daily Telegraph in-conversation with columnist Tim Stanley. The event proved to be vintage Truss, full of lines about the failings of Andrew Bailey, the OBR and the Fleet Street press. The Equality Act, she said, was to blame for the spread of ‘woke’ in Britain; Rachel Reeves was ‘pathetic’ for blaming her, rather than the Bank of England for the market meltdown of 2022.