Suella Braverman has hit out at “liberal Conservatives” after the party’s defeat at the General Election.
The former home secretary, who is among the likely candidates to succeed Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservatives, told the National Conservatism conference in Washington the party had taken a “good hiding”.
She put the blame for the defeat, in which the Conservatives lost more than 250 seats, on failures to keep their promises.
“We won a great majority in 2019 promising to do what the people wanted,” she said.
“We were going to use our Brexit freedoms and stop waves of illegal migrants. We were going to cut taxes. We were going to stop the lunatic woke virus. We did none of this.”
She continued: “Our problem is us. Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone’s fault but their own.
“My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame.”
Ms Braverman, who will speak via a video link to a Popular Conservatism post-election event alongside Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost on Tuesday, criticised the flying of the Progress Pride flag to “show how liberal and progressive we are”.
“The Progress flag says to me is one monstrous thing: That I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals and from our schools,” she said.
Ms Braverman was elected as MP in the redrawn constituency of Fareham and Waterlooville with a 6,000 majority.