The people who really run the UK named - and it's not Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves

The people who really run Britain have been named by former prime minister Liz Truss - and they are not elected politicians. Left-wing "incompetent technocrats" have governed the UK for 30 years while the Government chosen by voters has little real power, she said.

The true masters include Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, London police chief Sir Mark Rowley and officials in the Treasury, she said. And Ms Truss said Home Office lawyers dictated immigration policy while a body called the Climate Change Committee, largely made up of academics, helped dictate energy policies.

Speaking to the Daily Expresso news show, the former prime minister said: "People think the Prime Minister is all-powerful or the Chancellor is all-powerful, and they can go in to government and just pull the levers and things will happen.

"But actually, the Government is controlled by the permanent bureaucracy, by the Civil Service. It's them who hire and fire the people that work in the Government, they control the budgets of each government department, they make the decisions about how each policy is implemented."

"The Bank of England governor is able to make decisions about the economy, independent of the elected government, that have massive implications for people's lives," she said.

"Lots of power that used to sit in the hands of elected people now sits in the hands of the unelected."

The shift began after former Labour prime minister Tony Blair took power almost 30 years ago, she said, adding: "Blair was the last prime minister that actually ran this country."

But the people running Britain "are not neutral experts" said Ms Truss. "They are people with an agenda who have huge amounts of unelected power."

The former prime minister said: "They believe in net zero. They believe in mass migration.

"They believe in Keynesian economics. High tax and high spend.

"They have a worldview. They are not neutral technocrats."

She added: "The Left have been very successful and now pretty much every institution has been captured."

It meant voters are "incredibly frustrated" because their views are ignored.

Ms Truss told host JJ Anisiobi: "They keep voting for governments that limit immigration, that will lower taxes, and governments aren't delivering it."

She said the Conservative Party was part of the problem because it had accepted the "Blairite" agenda set by Labour since David Cameron became Tory leader in 2005.

And Ms Truss warned the Tories could be finished if they stuck to their current path - but said many of its MPs opposed change.

Asked what she thought of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Ms Truss said: "If she started taking on those type of issues, I would be interested. But at present there are still too many people involved in the Conservative Party, the so-called modernisers ... until she repudiates that agenda I don't think the Conservative Party has got much future."