Who is Liz Truss, Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister?
Former foreign secretary Liz Truss took over from Boris Johnson as UK prime minister on Tuesday after winning the Conservative leadership contest. A political shape-shifter, she has gone from being a radical who called for the abolition of the monarchy to a staunch economic liberal and Brexiteer.
Issued on: Modified:
Liz Truss is the Conservatives’ fourth prime minister since 2015 and the UK’s third female leader after Tory icon Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
She became PM after winning the Conservative party leadership contest, garnering 57 percent of the 170,000 party members’ votes.
“I campaigned as a conservative, and I will govern as a conservative,” she said on Monday, touting Tory values of low taxation and personal responsibility.
“She embodies a return to a form of ultra-liberal orthodoxy within the Conservative party," says political scientist Agnès Alexandre Collier.
"In December 2019 Boris Johnson campaigned on a slightly more redistributive programme aimed at an electorate in the northeast which supported Brexit and was traditionally on the left," Collier told RFI. "So [Truss] marks a return to Conservative party roots."
Truss has openly imitated "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher who ruled the country from 1979 to 1990, wearing similar attire on several occasions.
Thatcher is revered by some party faithful for her defence of free market economics and refusal to give in to a lengthy miners' strike.
Teenage 'misadventure'
Truss wasn’t, however, born a Conservative and her long political journey has been pitted with un-Thatcherite U-turns.
In a recent profile, French daily paper Les Echos said she was more “iron weathercock” than “iron lady”.
Mary Elizabeth Truss was born in Oxford in 1975. Her father, a maths teacher, and mother, a nurse, were, in her own words “to the left of Labour” and took her along to anti-nuclear marches.
Unlike the last two Conservative prime ministers, who went to elite boarding schools, Truss attended a state secondary school.
She went on to win a place at the prestigious Oxford University where she studied philosophy, politics and economics.
As a student, she was an active member of the centrist opposition Liberal Democrats, supporting the legalisation of cannabis and the abolition of the monarchy.
In her last year at university, she switched over to the Conservatives.
At a leadership hustings in Eastbourne in August she explained it was because she had met like-minded people who shared her commitment to “personal freedom, the ability to shape your own life and own destiny”.
Her time with the Lib Dems was a “teenage misadventure”, she said.
She became an accountant, married a fellow accountant in 2000 with whom she had two children.
Political musical chairs
Truss was first elected as a Conservative MP in 2010.
In that same year, she co-authored Britannia Unchained – "a kind of Thatcherite bible," says Collier, which argued in favour of stripping back state regulation.
It marked Truss out within the party as a prominent advocate of free market policies.
A reference in the book to British workers being “among the worst idlers in the world” drew criticism, though she claimed not to have written it.
In 2012, she entered government as education minister, moving over to the environment in 2014.
Under Theresa May’s premiership, in 2016, Truss became the first ever female Lord Chancellor and justice secretary, though she had several clashes with the judiciary.
When Boris Johnson took over in 2019, she first served as international trade secretary before becoming foreign secretary in 2021.
From Remain to Leave
In the run up to the June 2016 referendum on leaving the EU, Truss campaigned for Remain.
Brexit would be “a triple tragedy” – more rules, more forms and more delays when selling to the EU” she wrote in The Sun daily.
But when her side lost the vote, she changed tack, arguing that Brexit was an opportunity to “shake up the way things work” and that her fears that it could cause "disruption" were mistaken.
Her attempt to try and solve the problem of the Northern Ireland Protocol by scrapping parts of a post-Brexit EU-UK deal led to clashes with the EU.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Truss took a hard line insisting Russian forces should be driven from the country. She controversially showed support for people from the UK wanting to fight in Ukraine.
She backs the government policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Her relations with France have been tense, to say the least.
Asked at a leadership husting if President Macron was a friend or foe, she replied that the “jury was still out”.
Macron retorted she was “playing to the gallery”.
Low public opinion
Truss's critics say she’s an opportunist, but supporters praise her determination, hard-working attitude and loyalty.
She remains committed to liberal economics and has promised to slash taxes from her first day in office.
But she inherits the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.
Inflation – running at 10 percent but which could rise to 13 percent according to the Bank of England – has led to a wave of industrial action.
Energy bills are set to rise by 80 percent from October, and some groups are advocating refusing to pay them.
The right-wing ideologue has a tough task in winning over public opinion.
In a YouGov poll in late August, more than half of people polled thought Truss would make a “poor” or “terrible” prime minister.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe