‘Thatcher 2.0’? Does Liz Truss have what it takes to beat Rishi Sunak in the UK PM race?
‘Thatcher 2.0’? Does Liz Truss have what it takes to beat Rishi Sunak in the UK PM race?
Some have dubbed her “Thatcher 2.0”. After trailing in the first few rounds, Liz Truss recovered to knock out junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt in the race to become the next United Kingdom prime minister.
The foreign secretary will now take on Indian-origin Rishi Sunak and face the Conservative Party’s around 2,00,000 members who will decide their new leader and Britain’s next PM on 5 September. She is ranking first in polls so far and could leave Sunak behind to become the country’s third woman premier after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
The rise of Liz Truss
Born in Oxford, Truss spent her childhood in Scotland’s Paisley and then Leeds in north England. She went to Oxford University, where she studied philosophy, politics, and economics. Active in student politics, she was first a supporter of the Liberal Democrats before switching to the Conservative Party and now calls herself a Tory loyalist.
"We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all"
Liz Truss - then in her teens - tells the 1994 Lib Dem conference about being filmed by #Newsnight campaigning against the monarchy pic.twitter.com/5TNfI8lUDX
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 20, 2022
She worked as an accountant first but politics was her calling. After failing to make a mark in the 2001 and 2005 general elections, she was elected as a councillor in south-east London’s Greenwich in 2006. She worked as the deputy director of the right-of-centre Reform think tank, reports BBC.
After almost a decade of trying to make it to Westminister, she was elected a member of Parliament (MP) from South West Norfolk in 2010. Her rise after that has been meteoric. Two years on, she entered government as an education minister and was promoted by then PM David Cameron to environment secretary in 2014.
She was appointed justice secretary under Theresa May in 2016 and then went on to become chief secretary to the treasury, playing a crucial part in the government’s economic programme.
When Boris Johnson took over in 2019, Truss was appointed international trade secretary and last year, was elevated to the position of foreign secretary.
Changing stance on Brexit
During the 2016 referendum, Truss first was on Team Remain. In an article published in the British tabloid The Sun, she said that leaving the European Union would be “a triple tragedy – more rules, more forms and more delays” when selling to the bloc.
But she later changed her mind and spoke in favour of Brexit, saying that it would provide an opportunity to “shake up the way things work”.
Brexit negotiator and more
Interestingly, Truss was appointed by Johnson as Brexit negotiator, leading talks to resolve problems arising from provisions of the Brexit agreement covering trade with Northern Ireland. She was severely criticised by the European Union when parts of a post-Brexit deal were scrapped.
Truss played a key role in securing the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori from Iran, the two British Iranian nationals who had both been arrested and detained in the west Asian nation.
The foreign secretary rose to more prominence when she travelled to Moscow to meet her Kremlin counterpart Sergei Lavrov earlier this year, hoping to persuade Russia to pull back from the brink of the war with Ukraine. When Russia still invaded Ukraine she took a strong stand, insisting all Russian forces should be driven from the country and slapped several sanctions on the country.
However, she was slammed for backing individuals from the UK who wanted to travel to Ukraine to fight the war.
Embarrassing moments
Politicians are remembered as much for their policies as their faux pas. Truss has no dearth of them.
Her passionate speech about pork markets in 2014 turned her into a viral meme. As environment secretary, she said during a Conservative Party conference, “In December I'll be in Beijing, opening up new pork markets!” Then waiting for applause, she stood there with a self-pleasing grin. It was awkward.
She hit headlines in 2015 after going on a rant on cheese exports. She was mad that British people weren’t eating enough British cheese. “I want to see us eating more British food here in Britain… That. Is. A. Disgrace.”
Will somebody, for the love of god, please tell me if @trussliz ever sorted out the cheese deficit.
(Yes I will keep posting this clip until I get enough likes and retweets) pic.twitter.com/yMuVUNO9Tk
— simon le vans
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