Liz Truss, who is seeking to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and the British government, criticized the work culture of her compatriots who should “work harder” in a leaked conversation on Tuesday, AFP reported.

“There is a fundamental problem with labor relations in the United Kingdom,” says Truss, the foreign secretary in Boris Johnson’s government, in this memo, published by the Guardian newspaper on its website.

“If we want to become a richer and more prosperous country, this has to change. But I don’t think people are ready to do that,” she adds in the conversation, which the newspaper says took place when she was number two at the Treasury from 2017 to 2019.

The recording came just before a televised meeting organized by the Conservative Party in Perth, Scotland, during which Truss and his rival in the party race, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, were to answer questions from party members, News.ro reported.

Alluding to the 2016 Brexit referendum, Liz Truss notes that “we say Europe has caused these big problems, that immigrants (caused them), but what we have to do is work harder. This is not a popular message.”

In his opinion, the lower productivity of the British is the result “partly of a state of mind and attitude. It’s really a matter of work culture. In China, everything is completely different, I can assure you.”

Contacted by AFP, the Liz Truss campaign team did not dispute the authenticity of the claims, which it said were taken out of context.

“We need to improve productivity, which will lead to better wages and a better quality of life for workers across the UK,” the same source said.

The release comes as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunaka campaign to win the votes of Conservative Party members – around 200,000 – who will elect their leader by September 2 via postal ballot.

With the Conservative Party holding a majority in parliament, the winner will become prime minister and succeed Boris Johnson, who resigned in early July after a series of scandals and lies.

The favorite in the polls is Liz Truss.

The announcement of the results of the conservative elections is scheduled for September 5.