Liz Truss blames Sunak's criticism as reason for defeat

The former prime minister and also said her successor, Mr Sunak, had abandoned “conservative principles” during his premiership.

The former MP for South West Norfolk, Ms Trust became the first former prime minister to lose their seat at a general election since Ramsay MacDonald in 1935.

Ms Truss had held the South West Norfolk seat for the Conservatives since 2010 but lost her 26,195 majority to Labour’s Terry Jermy by 630 votes.

READ MORE: Liz Truss considering future in politics after losing seat

In her first public intervention since the results of the General Election, Ms Truss insisted she had attempted to take on the status quo – which she described as “Blairite economic orthodoxy” – with her short-lived, tax-cutting agenda.

Writing in a national newspaper, Ms Truss claimed she had “refrained from responding” during the campaign to “prevent further damage to the party”.

She added: “However, I feel that I must speak out now.”

“More than 250 of us paid the electoral price for this. Regrettably, over the course of the next five years, it will be the British people who have to bear the cost of this failing.”

Ms Truss claimed that the gambling scandal which engulfed the Tories mid-campaign had contributed to a lack of enthusiasm on the doorstep, as had Mr Sunak “repeating the mantra of stop the boats while presiding over record immigration”.

Former prime minister Liz Truss departs after losing her Norfolk South West seat to the Labour Party (Image: PA)

She also said her Conservative predecessors as prime minister did not do enough to push back against a “Leftist agenda”, including on issues like net zero and gender self-identification.

She was the only one, she claimed, who sought to act differently.

“During my brief period as prime minister, I tried to take on the Blairite economic orthodoxy and was the only recent PM to reduce the tax burden by reversing Rishi Sunak’s Health and Social Care Levy,” she said.

READ MORE: Liz Truss on why she's not worst prime minister ever

In contrast, she said Mr Sunak had “sought a short-term advantage in the Conservative leadership contest by claiming that cutting taxes did not generate growth” when the two had faced off against one other to be Tory leader in 2022.

She added: “This abandonment of conservative principles not only led to him getting no credit from the voters for cutting national insurance, but also led to an even larger general election defeat as he continued to trash my record and promote Labour’s false narrative that the global rise in mortgage rates was somehow my fault.”

The former prime minister rounded off her assessment of the current political landscape by suggesting the public will not stick with Labour after five years in Government, as the party has “no agenda to reduce taxes or deregulate or dismantle the bloated Whitehall bureaucracy”.

She added: “I am in no doubt that after five years of Labour, the public will be crying out for a popular Conservative alternative.”