Liz Truss says she regrets calling herself an LGBT ally

Asked about holding the LGBT sign, Truss told GB News: “I agree that I probably shouldn't have done, to be frank.”

Truss continued: “I was the minister who stopped gender self-id. So if you remember, under the Conservative government, we were putting forward a policy which was saying that without any checks, a man could declare themselves a woman and vice versa. Now I stopped that policy.”

“But what I was trying to do was do it in a way that didn't offend the broader, you know, the broader sort of LGBT community.”

“Now, should I have been less worried about offending them? Maybe.”

Truss held the role of Equalities Minister before becoming prime minister and was tasked with government policy on Trans issues.

Truss told government departments to leave the controversial LGBT charity Stonewall’s champions scheme which rated employers on their inclusivity policies for gay and trans people.

Truss said she signed the LGBT ally pledge as she was trying to “keep all of the Conservative parliamentary party onside”.

“This is the challenge of being in government, is you have to make compromises about what you say and what you do in order to get policies through,” she said.

Truss continued: “Sometimes I'm accused of being uncompromising and just railroading my policies, being a hand grenade. And other times I'm accused of being too compromising. I mean, you may well, which is it?”

Truss’s latest memoirs discuss threats to the West, including wokeism.

Last year the former prime minister sponsored a bill in parliament which would have ended Trans people’s access to some single sex spaces such as women’s toilets, meaning biological men would no longer be able to use the facilities.

However, in 2022 Truss wrote a letter to the government’s equality tsar stating: “The Government has no interest in changing the current situation where transgender people are able to use facilities of their chosen gender.”

Asked about the change in position, Truss told GB News: “I think there's two different things. The Equality Act specifically allows [sic] discrimination on the basis of biological sex. But if a transgender person wants to use a facility where that's not banned, then I didn't particularly want to change the status quo.”

“I'm very, very clear that, for example, for the under 18s that shouldn't be the case. But for the over 18s, that's a matter for the specific club or organisation.”

Truss’s latest book warns that “Extreme environmentalism and other previously fringe movements, such as trans activism, have been empowered and gained ground.”

She also takes aims at so-called “Conservatives in name only” or “Cinos”.

Her book comes as Rishi Sunak faces potential electoral oblivion in the upcoming election with record low opinion polling results.