The Conservative party can still win the next general election if it shows the public it is on their side, Theresa May has said. The former prime minister said Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt could rebuild the party’s reputation for “sound money and sound public finances” within the next two years, after the damage done by Liz Truss’s mini-budget. Speaking on Radio 4’s PM programme, she said: “There’s no doubt that the mini-budget had an impact on the Conservative party’s reputation for sound money and sound public finances. “I think from everything we’ve seen from Rishi so far actually, he’s going to be able to turn that round by the next election. I see that we can – in those two years – show people that a Conservative government can be on their side and that he can turn it round and we can win that election.” The leading pollster Sir John Curtice has said it will be “extremely difficult” for the Conservatives to win the next general election after presiding over a fiscal crisis. “History suggests that it’s going to be extremely difficult, just simply because no government that has presided over a fiscal financial crisis has eventually survived – 1948, 1967, 1976, 1992. It’s not a happy litany of precedence,” Curtice said. “Voters don’t forget governments being forced to make U-turns by financial markets. So it’s going to be very, very difficult.” His comments were echoed by the senior Conservative MP Charles Walker, who said it was “almost impossible” for Sunak to win the next election after the Tories “played” with the public’s finances with Truss’s mini-budget. The disastrous mini-budget was hailed by many Conservatives as a “a true, Tory budget”, as Truss launched the biggest tax cuts since 1972. But she triggered a domestic financial crisis and higher mortgage costs for millions, with inflation skyrocketing and the pound falling to its lowest ever level against the dollar. Since leaving office, May has not been above criticising her own party. The former prime minister regularly criticised Boris Johnson, especially at the height of the Partygate scandal, when she said: “Nobody is above the law.” Speaking to Radio 4, she criticised Sunak’s plans to water down the Modern Slavery Act she introduced. “There’s talk of requiring more evidence from individuals,” she said. “If you’re somebody who has been trafficked here as a sex slave, and you manage to find your way out of that and look to somebody for help, the chances are you probably haven’t got a piece of paper or a written statement from somebody to say you’ve been in slavery. The evidence comes gradually.” Sunak announced his plans to force people claiming to have been enslaved to provide more evidence before parliament’s Christmas recess.