After the longest promotional tour in history, Liz Truss finally held her belated book launch party. Less than an hour after voting against her successor’s smoking ban, Truss welcomed the good and the great of Tory politics to mark the advent of her new tome Ten Days to Save the West. In a wide-ranging speech, the onetime premier turned on her (many) foes and lamented the downsides of life in Downing Street, including the infamous flea infestation, ‘not to mention all the other creatures that were hanging around in No. 10’. Ouch.

Running through her political enemies, Truss made a passionate case for people to buy her book. ‘I do have children to feed,’ she reminded the crowd. ‘I have to pay for new trainers – because they used to have those Adidas ones.’ Her children are just part of the community unimpressed with Sunak’s ‘Samba’-wearing tendencies, then…

Her successor wasn’t the only MP whose ears will be burning tonight. Her tell-all covers a lot of bases, but Truss admitted that there were a few more things she wished she could have added:

There were a few things I did have to leave out that ended up on the cutting room floor. Some of the photos that Will Wragg sent me. Dominic Raab’s HR manual at the Foreign Office. And, you know, there will always be another book that those can go in.

What a tease. And Truss wasn’t finished with her digs, turning to the greats that paved the way for her:

It has been a rollercoaster ride. I don’t regret that I did it, and I am very grateful to David Cameron and Theresa May and Boris Johnson giving me the opportunity. I’m also very, very grateful to Andrew Bailey because he’s enabled me to spend more time with my family, to have a more sane life and a more comfortable existence.

Mr S can bet that’s the first word of thanks the Bank of England governor has heard from Truss…

And of course it was the quangocracy for which Truss reserved most disdain. Berating the changes to recent politics that have resulted in decisions being ‘outsourced to quangos’ and ‘the civil service’, the former Prime Minister gave a nod to her allies in the party:

Decisions…have been put within legal constraints that make it very, very hard to deliver Conservative policies. And I see a few fellow sufferers in the room, people who’ve been in ministerial office who know just how damn hard it is. So I feel here like I’m taking one for the team.

But it wasn’t all stark warnings. Truss was quick to celebrate the success of her book, quipping that it has already ‘overtaken an air fryer cookbook!’. She praised her ‘brave’ allies for supporting her will to do ‘things differently’ and, quoting Oliver Cromwell, Truss told her crowd: ‘A few honest men is better than numbers.’ Quite.