Watch: protesters crash Tory hustings

Liz Truss has often been accused of ‘dressing up’ or ‘cosplaying’ as Margaret Thatcher. And her team has done little to dispel that impression this campaign, releasing images this afternoon of Truss standing in front of the world’s largest Union Jack, just as the Iron Lady once did. But it was tonight’s Tory hustings in Eastbourne that offered the Foreign Secretary the chance to channel her political heroine after protesters disrupted her opening remarks.

The unwelcome guests were there to protest Truss’s previous employment at Shell and received a predictably hostile reaction from the disgruntled Tory audience after yelling ‘Shame on you!’. And while Truss didn’t quite go full Mrs T in responding to the hecklers – ‘you can’t blame them, it’s always better where the Tories are’ – she gave it a good go, lambasting ‘the militant people that try to disrupt our country and our democratic process’ and adding ‘I will legislate immediately to make sure that we are standing up to militant trade unions.’

Facing down the left never did Maggie any harm…