Minister mocks Liz Truss over her trade record and calls rival ‘the future of our party’

A government minister has mocked Liz Truss over her record on post-Brexit trade deals and anointed a rival as “the future of our party”.

In fresh evidence of Tory unity breaking down after the botched budget, Conor Burns suggested the prime minister’s time as trade secretary was a tale of style over substance.

The trade minister praised Kemi Badenoch, who now holds the trade brief, contrasting her approach with the way Ms Truss became notorious for her social media output in the job.

“Kemi totally gets that trade needs to move beyond Instagram posts about free trade agreements and needs to actually focus on delivering for companies the support to unleash the potential that the free trade agreements open up,” he told a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference.

Between 2019 and 2021, Ms Truss became a darling of the Tory right by boasting about the trade deals she had signed – although the vast majority simply rolled over existing EU agreements.

Some officials renamed the Department for International Trade the “Department for Instagramming Truss” during her time in charge.

Mr Burns also said he is “not a big fan of talking about bigger cakes” – an apparent reference to Ms Truss insisting growth, not how wealth is shared out, is what matters.

Ms Badenoch, who secured a senior Cabinet job by finishing fourth in the summer leadership race, is “the future of our party”, he told the event in Birmingham.

The comments came after a Cabinet minister, Penny Mordaunt, abandoned collective responsibility to back the push by Tory rebels to block real-terms benefits cuts.

Conservative opponents of the prime minister’s plans have lined up her threat to ditch a government pledge to peg rises to inflation as their next revolt.

Ms Mordaunt, the Commons leader, said: “I have always supported, whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system, keeping pace with inflation.

“It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before and so have a lot of my colleagues.”

A second Cabinet minister, the Welsh secretary Robert Buckland, also backed increases in Universal Credit as a “pretty useful delivery mechanism” for helping the poorest.

“My experience of Conservatism is that we’re at our best when we encourage people to succeed but also help those genuinely in need. The safety net is an important part of what a one nation Conservative is all about,” he said.