TELL Magazine

Liz Truss, the Secretary of State for International Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities in the United Kingdom will step in as the next tenant of No. 10, Downing Street, the official residence of the country’s Prime Minister. The 47-year-old woman who will be the fourth Conservative leader of the UK within six years is considered an opportune politician who has moved from being a notable liberal activist to a fast rising leader of the Conservative. Though her background as a liberal democrat almost became an albatross during the campaigns for the office of Prime Minister, she told voters that liberal left ideology she held prior to enlisting in Conservative in 1996 was her share of “teenage misadventures’ ‘. In other words while some other teenagers indulged in “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”, she was involved in politics. Interestingly, the late Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady, against whom she protested as a youthful liberal democrat is today one of her heroes. In fact, she is seen as somewhat of a devotee of the Thatcher political philosophy, Thatcherism.

She emerged leader of the Conservative, which has the majority in the parliament, on Monday September 5, 2022, after what appeared a long drawn contest. She scored 81,326 to defeat Rishi Sunak who scored 60,399 votes. Truss, a very senior member in the cabinet of embattled Boris Johnson who resigned in June, is one of the ministers who stood through the turbulence, even when others were walking out on Boris Johnson.

Truss who read Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Merton, Oxford worked with Shell, the oil giant between 1996 and 2000, during which time she qualified as a management accountant. After working somewhere else she gave her time to politics. And from 2012 she has climbed the political ladder to become one of the senior cabinet members, and now will be the prime minister, the highest political office in the country.

In 2012 she was appointed Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Education. Her mandate then was to oversee childcare and early learning, assessment, qualifications and curriculum reform, behaviour , attendance, and school food review. Truss, under David Cameron, as leader of Conservative, climbed to the party’s “A list”. By 2016 Ms Truss became the first woman to become Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. That was under Prime Minister Theresa May.

Married in the year 2000 to 58-year-old Hugh O’Leary, also an accountant, Ms Truss has two daughters, Liberty and Frances. However, perhaps in line with the philosophy of the husband who is said to be of a quiet disposition, the family is hardly in public glare. In fact, the photographs of her daughters she has posted so far on Instagram had been taken from the back.

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