Fareham and Waterlooville MP Suella Braverman blames 'liberal Conservatives' and failure to stop 'lunatic woke virus' for party's landslide General Election loss

The former home secretary, who is being touted as a likely successor to 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 was also due to speak via a video link to a Popular Conservatism post-election event alongside Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost yesterday, criticised the flying of the Progress Pride flag to “show how liberal and progressive we are”.

The Progress Pride flag incorporates the regular LGBTQ+ six-colour rainbow flag, along with the transgender flag stripes (white, light blue and light pink), the brown and black stripes to represent the marginalised people of colour communities (brown and black), as well as those living with AIDS and the stigma and prejudice surrounding them (black).

Referring to the trans element of the flag, she added: “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.”

Ms Braverman was elected as MP in the redrawn constituency of Fareham and Waterlooville with a 6,000 majority. She first won the Fareham seat, as it was, in 2015, and was re-elected to it in 2019 with a majority of 26,086.

She stood in the party’s leadership race in 2022 after Boris Johnson’s resignation. After failing to gain enough votes in the second round to progress, she endorsed the ultimate winner, Liz Truss.