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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
World
Rebecca Daly

Protestors interrupt British Prime Minister Liz Truss's first conference speech as Conservative leader

Protestors have interrupted a major conference speech by British Prime Minister, Liz Truss.

The new PM took to the stage for her first conference speech as Conservative party leader, but was soon halted by Greenpeace protestors.

Under-fire Truss had delivered just 10 minutes of her speech at the annual Tory gathering in Birmingham before shouting could be heard.

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The conference hall was mostly full, despite many members having left last night to get ahead of upcoming train strikes, the Mirror UK reports.

During the Prime Minister’s keynote address, two protestors from Greenpeace stood up and began to shout. They unveiled a yellow flag which read, “Who voted for this?”

The protestors were escorted out by security to the chant of “Out! Out! Out!” by disgruntled members. Video footage of the incident shows one of the protestors smiling at the camera, with Truss herself heard saying: “Let’s get them removed.”

Conservative members then stood in ovation and shouted: “Go on Liz.”

The PM grinned before carrying on with her speech, but not before light-heartedly addressing the incident. She joked: “Later on in my speech, my friends, I’m going to talk about the anti-growth coalition, but I think they arrived at the hall a bit too early.

"They were meant to come later on. We’ll get onto them.”

Professor of British and Irish politics at the University of Liverpool, Jon Tonge said the PM handled the interruption well.

Speaking to Claire Byrne on her RTE radio show, he said: “The speech itself is not the problem for Liz Truss. The speech was relatively competent, given the chaos that has preceded it at this conference in Birmingham.

“Liz Truss dealt relatively well with the hecklers who were fairly quickly removed from the conference hall.

“Liz Truss didn’t lose her cool at that.”

Prior to the incident, the audience had applauded members of the Cabinet as they filed in to take their seats in the front row.

Truss made her entrance to the 90s hit ‘Moving on Up’ by M People.

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