An emotional Liz Truss has become tearful as she has described the impact on her teenage daughters of the relentless criticism aimed at her in an interview for GB News.
The former Conservative Prime Minister wiped away tears when she was asked on Chopper's Political Podcast about how she coped with her children Liberty and Frances seeing the criticism she had to face.
Truss told the podcast: "I think I find it hardest when it's to do with my children. Everything else I can take."
Truss described movingly in her book Ten Years To Save The West how “most children find out about the fallibilities of their parents over a number of years. Mine saw all of mine publicly exposed in very short order".
She admitted that she found the way her weaknesses were picked over by her critics as "difficult" when it came to her children, adding: "I tell them not to read the papers and not to look at Twitter."
At one point her daughter Liberty telephoned her from her school playing field urging her not to resign as Prime Minister after just over 40 days in office in October 2022.
Liz Truss became tearful as she spoke about the impact criticism had on her children
GB NEWS
Truss said: "It was a bit late by then. It was a bit… I had sort of I'd written the resignation speech by then when she phoned."
In the wide ranging interview Truss set out how her mandate for change which she felt she had set out during the Tory leadership hustings had not been respected by her fellow Conservative MPs who eventually helped to force her out of office.
She said: "I was very clear about what I wanted to do. I wanted to get on with fracking. I wanted to get the EU laws off the statute books. I wanted to cut taxes, hold down public spending. I was clear about that during the leadership election, and I got a mandate.
"And I do feel that mandate was not respected by elements of the Conservative Parliamentary Party."
The former Conservative Prime Minister wiped away tears when asked about her family
GB NEWS
She added: "What I discovered in Downing Street was those forces of resistance were very strong. And to be honest, I didn't have enough support from the Conservative Parliamentary Party to be able to overcome those forces.
"Did I get everything right? Obviously not. I'm a human being. I've got strengths and weaknesses like everybody else.
"But, was it actually possible to deliver a Conservative agenda with our current institutional structures and with the current makeup of the Conservative Parliamentary Party? I think the answer is no it wasn't."
Truss set out her radical mandate for changing Britain by repealing major pieces of legislation from Tony Blair's government.
"The Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act, the Constitutional Reform Act, which created a Supreme court in Britain - we need to repeal all of them.
"If you just repeal part of it, you get the ECHR telling you you've got to do those policies anyway. That's what I'm saying. It's not it's not enough. It's not enough just to have Conservative policies and try and implement them.
"You've actually got to change the system because we're now in a position where we are running into judicial activism, technocrat activism"
Truss said that she had wanted to create a country to be proud of. She said: "Things have to change. But what we face is a huge resistance to that change. And that is what I feel needs to be cracked free, because at my heart I'm a patriot.
"I want this country to be successful, and I want to feel proud of Britain. And too often I feel we've got all these skills and capabilities and these great ideas, and yet they're not being allowed to happen.
"If Conservatives really want to deliver the Conservative policies we all believe in, we've got to actually change that system."
Truss also criticised some of her colleagues for being too satisfied with the ministerial trappings of office.
"I think there is an element of that. And there's an element of MPs in all parties thinking, what job am I going to get after politics? Do I really want to rock the boat and not be able to get that job on a corporate board?" she said.
"Or do I want to turn up at a dinner party this weekend and be slagged off for being nasty or not being pro the environment, or not being pro trans rights?
"It's a lonely and hard road and you're not necessarily going to be popular and you're not necessarily going to have those corporate opportunities. So you can absolutely see why people say, I'd rather take the easy and comfortable path."
Truss added that she would welcome Nigel Farage as a Tory party member and refused to rule out running to be leader again, saying simply: "I'm not aspiring to anything like that."
Asked again if she were not ruling it out, she added: "The reason I ran for leader in the first place is I want things to change in Britain. I am prepared to play any role in making that change happen. I think my role at the moment is trying to open up, change the debate."