Liz Truss
Mary Elizabeth Truss (born 26 July 1975) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down amid a government crisis, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. The member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010, Truss previously held various Cabinet positions under three prime ministers—David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson—lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022.
Liz Truss
Boris Johnson
Rishi Sunak
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Rishi Sunak
Theresa May
David Cameron
26,195 (50.9%)
Conservative (since 1996)
Liberal Democrats (until 1996)
2
- John Truss (father)
Truss studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton College, Oxford, and was the president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats. In 1996 she joined the Conservative Party. She worked at Royal Dutch Shell and Cable & Wireless and was the deputy director of the think tank Reform. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she became the MP for South West Norfolk at the 2010 general election. As a backbencher she called for reform in several policy areas including the economy, childcare and mathematics in education. Truss co-founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and wrote or co-wrote a number of papers and books, including After the Coalition and Britannia Unchained.
Truss was the parliamentary under-secretary of state for childcare and education from 2012 to 2014 before Cameron appointed her secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs in a cabinet reshuffle. Although she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union, Truss supported Brexit following the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Following Cameron's resignation in 2016, his successor Theresa May appointed her secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor, making Truss the first woman to serve as lord chancellor in the office's thousand-year history; in the aftermath of the 2017 general election, she was demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury. After May announced her resignation in May 2019, Truss supported Johnson's successful bid to become Conservative leader and prime minister. He appointed Truss secretary of state for international trade and president of the Board of Trade in July and subsequently to the additional role of minister for women and equalities in September. Johnson promoted Truss to foreign secretary in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle; during her time in the position, she led negotiations on the Northern Ireland Protocol and the UK's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In September 2022 Truss defeated Rishi Sunak in a leadership election to succeed Johnson, who had resigned because of an earlier government crisis, and was appointed as prime minister by Elizabeth II two days before the monarch's death; her government's business was subsequently suspended during a national mourning period of ten days. In response to the rising cost of living and increased energy prices, her ministry announced the Energy Price Guarantee. The government then announced large-scale tax cuts and borrowing, which led to financial instability and were largely reversed. Facing mounting criticism and loss of confidence in her leadership, Truss announced her resignation as leader of the Conservative Party on 20 October. Sunak was elected unopposed as her successor, and appointed prime minister on 25 October. As at 2024 Truss remains in the House of Commons as a backbencher.
Career
Employment and candidatures (1996–2010)
From 1996 to 2000 Truss worked for Royal Dutch Shell, living in Lewisham and Greenwich and qualifying as a chartered management accountant.[25][26] In 2000 she was employed by Cable & Wireless and rose to the position of economic director before leaving in 2005;[27] one of her colleagues there, the Labour peer George Robertson, said that Truss "had a passion for politics ... she [was] fresh minded, enthusiastic and the Tory Party needed people like that".[28] In January 2008, after losing her first two elections, Truss became the deputy director of Reform, a centre-right think tank, where she advocated for more focus on countering serious and organised crime and higher standards in schools and action to tackle what Reform perceived as Britain's "falling competitiveness".[29] She co-authored The Value of Mathematics,[30] Fit for Purpose,[31] A New Level,[30] Back To Black[32][33] and other reports.[30]
Whilst working at Shell, Truss served as the chair of the Lewisham Deptford Conservative Association from 1998 to 2000, having been introduced to the branch by her friend and later Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price.[24][34] During this time, at a reception at the Greenwich Conservative Association, Truss met her future husband, Hugh O'Leary,[24] whom she married in 2000 and with whom she has two daughters: Frances (born 2006) and Liberty (born 2008).[35][36] Truss unsuccessfully stood for election twice in Greenwich London Borough Council: for Vanbrugh ward in 1998 and Blackheath Westcombe in 2002.[37][38] The deputy leader of Greenwich Conservatives, Graeme Coombes, recalled in 2022 that Truss "said [in 1998] she was hoping to stand for Parliament ... she was destined for bigger and better things".[39] However, Alex Grant, the candidate who had defeated Truss in 2002, called her "largely invisible during the campaign".[40] In the 2006 council election, Truss was elected for Eltham South,[41] but did not seek re-election to the council in 2010, standing down the day she became an MP.[42]
Political positions
Domestic issues
Truss has economically liberal views and supports free trade and deregulation.[258] She supports the neoliberal philosophy of supply-side economics, often referred to as "trickle-down economics".[259][260] After Truss's dismissal of Kwarteng and Hunt's reversal of many of the mini-budget's economic measures, the BBC's political editor Faisal Islam wrote that "Trussonomics is dead".[261]
During her time as a Liberal Democrat, Truss supported the abolition of the monarchy. In 2022 a video of a 19-year-old Truss at the 1994 Liberal Democrat conference criticising the notion of people being "born to rule" resurfaced;[55] in an interview with LBC during her leadership campaign, Truss stated that "almost as soon as I made the speech, I regretted it".[262] In 2021 Truss stated that the Conservatives should "reject the zero-sum game of identity politics, [reject] the illiberalism of cancel culture, and [reject] the soft bigotry of low expectations that holds so many people back".[263] She voted to legalise same-sex marriage but has opposed the expansion of transgender rights.[264] Truss spoke against gender self-identification, stating that "medical checks are important" and that "only women have a cervix".[265] Despite initially supporting single-sex toilets being restricted on the basis of biological sex, she later said in February 2022 that the government was not interested in enacting such a measure.[266]
