EXCLUSIVE: Tory MPs told by Minister previously mocked online to be more "out there" on Twitter and Instagram to win the next election

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss has told the Yorkshire Post that Tory MPs should be prepared to be more "out there" on social media.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who has gone from being the subject of mocking online memes to a social media darling, said voters are sick of politicians "spouting the same message".

Her online reputation has undergone a dramatic makeover - from being relentlessly teased over an infamous conference speech in which she angrily labelled Britain's level of cheese imports a "disgrace" and talked of "opening up new pork markets" in Beijing, to winning praise for tweets about "#megabantz" at the Treasury and Instagram posts extolling the virtues of vape shops and vegan cafes.

Ms Truss, who considers herself a Yorkshirewoman having been educated at Roundhay School in Leeds, told The Yorkshire Post she has "embraced the meme" and "embraced the cheese" and has now "just decided that I was going to say what I thought".

As Tories attended campaign training sessions at the party's spring conference in central London, Ms Truss urged her colleagues to up their game online.

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She said: "Politics has changed, under the Blair and Brown days it was all about lines to take and you had all these things that you had to say and I think the public got thoroughly sick of it and hearing the same, people spouting the same message.

“And the way we are going to win the next election, which I absolutely think we can and should do, is by talking about what we believe and being honest about what we think, and being prepared to be ‘out there’.”

An internal review of the Conservatives' disastrous 2017 general election performance concluded that the party should "urgently upscale" its digital department after being outfought on social media by Labour and the Jeremy Corbyn-backing Momentum campaign group.

And party chairman Brandon Lewis has placed an emphasis on boosting the Tories' online output in a bid to make the party battle ready for May's local elections and beyond.