Liz Truss has said she would have done better than Rishi Sunak at the general election if she had still been Conservative leader.

Truss was forced to stand down as prime minister in 2022, after just 45 days when her “mini budget” triggered a market meltdown.

Asked at a Tory conference event if she would have done better than Sunak, who led the party to the biggest election defeat in its history in July, she said: “Yes I do.”

But she went on to say that it would still have been a “tall order” to win, adding that the party “should have kept Boris”.

“If the mini-budget had been allowed to succeed” then voters would have looked more kindly on the Conservatives, she argued, but it was “difficult” to get the changes she wanted through without the support of Tory MPs.

The former prime minister said she would not endorse any of the four contenders vying for the Tory leadership – Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly.

“So far I haven’t seen any of the candidates really acknowledge how bad things are in the country as a whole and frankly for the Conservative Party.

“I think there’s a bit of Panglossian [thinking that] all we need to do is unite, all we need to do is show competence and we’ll be ushered back into office”.

She urged candidates to think more radically about policies like expanding fracking and coal power, and abolishing the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, arguing that Britain was now a “socialist country”, thanks in part to previous Conservative governments.

The packed auditorium listened largely in silence, but broke into applause and cheering when Truss said a Donald Trump victory in the US elections “would really cheer me up”.

She was quizzed by The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley about how she managed to keep going in the face of rejection by voters, attacks from critics and ridicule by comedians.

She denied lacking a sense of humour, but said jokes about her from “left wing” comics were “just not funny” as they were “in power” as part of the liberal establishment she was fighting against.

Explaining that she was on a mission to save “not just Britain but Western civilization”, she added: “I enjoy the fight.”

Did she ever feel like throwing the towel in and doing whatever makes her happy? she was asked.

“This is what I do to be happy,” she told the crowd.

She said that she had lost her own, previously safe, Norfolk seat in the general election because of Reform UK’s strong performance, but added: “I don’t believe the people of South West Norfolk actually consciously want a Labour MP.”

When Tim Stanley asked the crowd if they wanted to see Truss back in Parliament, many hands shot up. She did not rule out a return to the Commons, but said she was still considering what to do next.

She got another round of applause when she attacked the British media for not giving enough scrutiny to Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey.

“Conservatives won’t succeed until we get rid of the Office for Budget Responsibility,” she said, before accusing the Bank of England of seeking to “blame their mistakes on me”.

She argued that the “new divide in British politics” is between “the establishment”, which includes institutions like the bank – and the BBC – but also the former prime minister Theresa May, the current chancellor Rachel Reeves – “both former employees of the Bank of England” – and senior bureaucrats.