Liz Truss

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From 1996 to 2000, Truss worked for Shell, during which time she qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) in 1999. In 2000, Truss was employed by Cable & Wireless and rose to economic director before leaving in 2005.

After losing her first two elections, Truss became the full-time deputy director of Reform in January 2008, where she advocated more rigorous academic standards in schools, a greater focus on tackling serious and organised crime, and urgent action to deal with Britain's falling competitiveness. She co-authored The Value of Mathematics, Fit for Purpose, A New Level, and Back To Black: Budget 2009 Paper, among other reports.

Political career

Truss served as the chair of the Lewisham Deptford Conservative Association from 1998 to 2000. Truss unsuccessfully contested the Greenwich London Borough Council elections in 1998 (for Vanbrugh ward) and 2002 (in Blackheath Westcombe). On 4 May 2006, she was elected as a councillor for Eltham South in the 2006 Greenwich London Borough Council election. Truss did not seek re-election to the council on 6 May 2010, with the 2010 UK general election being announced on 6 April 2010, the Dissolution of Parliament on 12 April 2010 and the last day to file MP nomination papers 20 April 2010.

At the 2001 UK general election, Truss stood for the constituency of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire, a safe seat for the Labour Party. She came a distant second, but increased the Conservative vote by 3.2%. Before the 2005 UK general election, the parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley, Sue Catling, was pressured to resign by the local Conservative Association, whereupon Truss was selected to fight the seat, which is also in West Yorkshire. Truss narrowly lost the election to the Labour Party incumbent.

Under David Cameron as Conservative leader, Truss was added to the party's "A List". In October 2009, she was selected for the South West Norfolk seat by members of the constituency Conservative Association. She won over 50% of the vote in the first round of the final against five other candidates. Shortly after her selection, some members of the constituency association objected to Truss's selection, due to her failing to declare a prior affair with the married Conservative MP Mark Field. A motion was proposed to terminate Truss's candidature, but this was defeated by 132 votes to 37 at a general meeting of the association's members three weeks later.

Following her election to the House of Commons on 6 May 2010, Truss campaigned for issues including the retention of the RAF Tornado base at RAF Marham in her constituency; over seven months she asked 13 questions in the Commons about RAF Marham, secured a special debate on the subject, wrote dozens of letters to ministers and collected signatures on a petition which was delivered to Downing Street. From the start of her parliamentary career, she also lobbied for the dualling of the A11 west of Thetford; the work was completed in 2014. "With an eye on Thetford Forest, in her constituency, she spoke out against the proposal to sell off forests" and played "a leading role" in preventing a waste incinerator being built at King's Lynn.

In March 2011, Truss wrote a paper for the liberal think tank CentreForum in which she argued for an end to bias against serious academic subjects in the education system so that social mobility can be improved. Truss wrote a further paper for the same think tank in May 2012, in which she argued for change in the structure of the childcare market in Britain.

In October 2011, Truss founded the Free Enterprise Group, which has been supported by over 40 other Conservative MPs. In September 2011, together with four other members of the Free Enterprise Group, she had co-authored After the Coalition, a book which sought to challenge the consensus that Britain's economic decline is inevitable by arguing for the return of a more entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture.

Britannia Unchained was published on 13 September 2012 by the same authors as above. In Chapter 4, which is named "Work Ethic" (page 61), the book states: "Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor." During a BBC leadership debate in July 2022, Truss said that the authors had each written a different chapter of the book and that Dominic Raab had written chapter 4 which contains those claims. Raab later remarked that the authors had taken "collective responsibility" for the book. As part of a serialisation in The Daily Telegraph, Truss wrote an article previewing Britannia Unchained. The book was promoted by its publishers as the work of "the Conservative Party's rising stars".

Truss has championed Britain following Germany's lead in allowing people to have tax-free and less heavily regulated "mini-jobs". Since Truss published a paper on the policy for the Free Enterprise Group in February 2012, the policy has been examined by the Treasury as a policy to promote growth.

Truss has campaigned for improved teaching of more rigorous school subjects, especially mathematics. She noted in 2012 that only 20% of British students studied maths to 18, and called for maths classes to be compulsory for all those in full-time education. Truss herself studied maths and further maths at A level. She argued in 2011 that comprehensive school pupils were being "mis-sold" easy, low-value subjects to boost school results: comprehensive school pupils were six times as likely to take media studies at A-level as privately educated pupils. Truss also criticised the over-reliance on calculators to the detriment of mental arithmetic.

From March 2011, Truss was a Member of the Justice Select Committee, remaining on the committee until her appointment as a government minister.

Ministerial career

On 4 September 2012, Truss was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, responsible for childcare and early learning, assessment, qualifications, curriculum reform, behaviour and attendance, and school food review. In this role, she developed some of the policy areas that she had pursued as a backbencher.

In January 2013, she announced proposals to reform A-Levels, by concentrating examinations at the end of two-year courses. She sought to improve British standards in maths for fear that children are falling behind those in Asian countries, and led a fact-finding visit to schools and teacher-training centres in Shanghai in February 2014 to see how children there have become the best in the world at maths.

Truss also outlined plans to reform childcare in England, which would overhaul childcare qualifications and increase the maximum number of children relative to adults in a care establishment, with the intention of widening the availability of childcare along with increasing pay and qualifications among staff. The proposed reforms were broadly welcomed by some organisations such as the charity 4Children, the Confederation of British Industry and the College of West Anglia. However, the proposals met opposition from others. The TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady and the then Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg were among those criticising the reforms, and were echoed by some parents and childcare bodies, such as the charity National Day Nurseries Association.

The columnist Polly Toynbee was highly critical of the minister's plans and challenged Truss to demonstrate how to care for two babies alongside four toddlers on her own. Truss responded to Toynbee's challenge by saying that being an early educator was a very demanding job, requiring great and specialist expertise, for which she was not trained. In the event, aspects of the reforms relating to relaxation of childcare ratios were blocked by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said: "The response, not just from nurseries, but overwhelmingly from parent groups was they thought this was a bad idea."

In a 15 July 2014 cabinet reshuffle, Truss was appointed Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural affairs, replacing Owen Paterson. In apparent contrast to her predecessor, Truss declared that she fully believed that climate change is happening, and that "human beings have contributed to that". She became a member of the Privy Council the next day.

At the Conservative Party conference in September 2014, Truss made a speech in which she said "We import two-thirds of our cheese, that is a disgrace" and "In December, I’ll be in Beijing, opening up new pork markets." The awkwardness of her delivery led her to be widely mocked, and clips of the speech went viral.

In November 2014, Truss launched a new 10-year bee and pollinator strategy to try to reverse the trend of falling bee populations, including a strategy to revive traditional meadows which provide the most fertile habitat for pollinators. In July 2015, she approved the limited temporary lifting of an EU ban on the use of two neonicotinoid pesticides, enabling their use for 120 days on about 5% of England's oilseed rape crop to ward off the cabbage-stem flea beetle; campaigners in 2012 warned that pesticides were shown to harm bees by damaging their renowned ability to navigate home.

Truss cut taxpayer subsidies for solar panels on agricultural land, as her view was that the land could be better used to grow crops, food and vegetables. She described farming and food as "hotbeds of innovation" and promoted the production and export of British food.

In March 2015, she was one of two cabinet ministers to vote against the government's successful proposal to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, in what was technically a free vote.

On 14 July 2016, Truss was appointed as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor in Theresa May's first ministry. Truss became the first woman to hold either position and the first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the office. May's decision to appoint her was criticised by the then Minister of State for Justice Lord Faulks, who resigned from the government, questioning whether Truss would have the clout to be able to stand up to the prime minister when necessary, on behalf of the judges. Truss herself said that he did not contact her before going public with his criticism, and she had never met or spoken to him.

In November 2016, Truss was further criticised, including by the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve and the Criminal Bar Association, for failing to support more robustly the judiciary and the principle of judicial independence, after three judges of the Divisional Court came under attack from politicians and from the Daily Mail for ruling against the government in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, who had previously suggested that, like her immediate predecessors Chris Grayling and Michael Gove, Truss lacked the essential legal expertise that the constitution requires, called for her to be sacked as Justice Secretary as her perceived inadequate response "signals to the judges that they have lost their constitutional protector".

Truss denied she had failed to defend the judges. "An independent judiciary is the cornerstone of the rule of law, vital to our constitution and freedoms", she wrote. "It is my duty as Lord Chancellor to defend that independence. I swore to do so under my oath of office. I take that very seriously, and I will always do so." She also said that the independent judiciary was robust enough to withstand attack by The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. However, in March 2017, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, told the House of Lords constitution select committee that Truss was "completely and utterly wrong" to say she could not criticise the media and reiterated the importance of protecting judges.

Following a significant rise in prison violence incidents in 2015 and 2016, in November 2016 Truss announced a £1.3 billion investment programme in the prison service and the recruitment of 2,500 additional prison officers, partly reversing the cuts made under the previous coalition government.

Following the 2017 UK general election, Truss was moved on 11 June to the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, attending the cabinet but not a full member of it, in what was seen by some as a demotion.

Truss developed an enthusiasm for cultivating her presence on Twitter and Instagram. The Times described this as an unorthodox approach that had won her fans. She was also closely involved in the launch of the free market campaign group, Freer. Some of her civil servants were reported as finding her tenure as chief secretary "exhausting", because of her demanding work schedule and her habit of asking officials multiplication questions at random intervals.

In June 2018, Truss gave a speech outlining her declared commitment to freedom and individual liberty. She criticised regulations that get in the way of people's lives and warned that raising taxes could see the Conservatives being "crushed" at the polls; in particular, she criticised ministerial colleagues who she said should realise "that it's not macho just to demand more money. It's much tougher to demand better value and challenge the blob of vested interests within your department".

In 2019, Truss declared that she could be a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party to succeed May. However, she ultimately elected not to stand, and instead endorsed Boris Johnson.

After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, Truss was tipped for promotion in return for her support during his leadership campaign, during which she advised Johnson on economic policy, and was the architect of plans to cut taxes for people earning over £50,000. Consequently, it was thought she would be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer or Business Secretary, but she was instead promoted to the position of Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. Following the resignation of Amber Rudd, Truss was additionally appointed Minister for Women and Equalities.

Twice in September 2019, Truss said that the Department for International Trade had "inadvertently" allowed shipping of radio spares and an air cooler to Saudi Arabia in contravention of an order of the Court of Appeal, which found that UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in the war in Yemen were unlawful. While Truss apologised to a Commons committee on arms export controls, opposition MPs said her apology was insufficient and called for her to resign for breaking the law.

On 19 March 2020, Truss introduced to Parliament the Trade Act 2021, which established the legal framework for the UK to conduct trade deals with nations around the world.

On 7 July 2020, Truss announced the lifting of a year-long ban on the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. She said that "there is not a clear risk that the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law."

In August 2020, a number of meetings Truss held with the Institute of Economic Affairs were removed from the public record because they were recategorised as "personal discussions", which the Labour Party said raised concerns about integrity, transparency and honesty in public office.

Truss undertook negotiations for a post-Brexit free trade agreement between the UK and Japan. An agreement between the two countries was struck in September 2020, which Truss said would result in "99% of exports to Japan" being "tariff-free". It was the first major trade deal the UK had signed since leaving the European Union and was hailed as a "historic moment" by Truss; it mostly copied the existing trade deal the EU had agreed with Japan. This was followed by newly negotiated trade deals with Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

In December 2020, Truss made a speech on equality policy in which she stated that the UK focused too heavily on "fashionable" race, sexuality, and gender issues at the expense of poverty and geographical disparity. In the speech, she announced that the government and civil service would no longer be receiving unconscious bias training.

On 15 September 2021 during a cabinet reshuffle, Johnson promoted Truss from International Trade Secretary to Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development affairs.

At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, she said that France had acted unacceptably during the Jersey fishing dispute.

In October 2021, she called on Russia to intervene in the Belarus–European Union border crisis and said she wanted a "closer trading and investment relationship" with the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In November 2021, Truss and her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid announced a new decade-long deal aimed at stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In December 2021, she met her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Stockholm, urging Russia to seek peace in Ukraine in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

On 5 November 2021, she called for a ceasefire in the Tigray War between Ethiopian rebel groups and the Ethiopian government led by Abiy Ahmed, saying that "there is no military solution and that negotiations are needed to avoid bloodshed and deliver lasting peace".

In January 2022, the former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, who serves on the international board of the China Development Bank, accused Truss of making "demented" comments about Chinese military aggression in the Pacific, saying that "Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation".

Truss was appointed in December 2021 as the British Government's chief negotiator with the EU, following the resignation of Lord Frost. On 30 January 2022, she told the BBC's Sunday Morning programme that "we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea, as well as supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons". The Russian diplomat Maria Zakharova commented, using social media, that the Baltic states are located on or near the Baltic Sea and not the Black Sea, which is 700 miles away from the Baltic. Truss's scheduled trip to Ukraine was cancelled after she tested positive for COVID-19 on 31 January 2022.

On 6 February 2022, Truss warned that "China must respect the Falklands' sovereignty" and defended the Falkland Islands as "part of the British family" after China backed Argentina's claim over islands. (See: Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute.)

In October 2022, it was revealed that Truss's phone was hacked during her service as the foreign minister with Russian spies under suspicion for the act.

On 10 February 2022, Truss again met Lavrov. In the context of tensions between Russia and the West over a build-up of Russian troops near the Russia–Ukraine border, talks between the two foreign ministers were described as "difficult". Lavrov described the discussion as "turning out like the conversation of a mute and a deaf person". He dismissed "demands to remove Russian troops from Russian territory" as "regrettable" and asked Truss if she recognised Russia's sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov regions, two Russian provinces where Russian troops were deployed. Later that day, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office prepared legislation to allow for more sanctions on Russian organisations and individuals. On 21 February 2022, Truss condemned Russia's diplomatic recognition of two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the Donbas in Ukraine. She also stated that the British government would announce new sanctions against Russia.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Truss was asked in a BBC interview on 27 February about a call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for foreigners to join the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, and if she supported British volunteers joining, to which she responded: "Absolutely, if that is what they want to do". The comments were criticised by some Conservative colleagues, including former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who said that while "the comments of the foreign secretary may be entirely honourable and understandable", people going to Ukraine to fight without formal licences from the UK government would be in breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 and committing a criminal offence. Following the Russian military's being placed on high nuclear alert on 27 February, Russian officials said it was in response to Truss's comments. Boris Johnson's spokesperson later stated that British citizens should not travel to Ukraine to fight the Russians and dismissed a claim by the Kremlin that comments from Truss prompted the nuclear alert.

At the end of February, Truss called on the G7 countries to limit the import of oil and natural gas from Russia. She said the Russo-Ukrainian War could "last for years" and that it could mark the "beginning of the end" for Putin. In March, Truss said it was necessary to "work with all of our allies around the world", including Saudi Arabia, so that the UK is no longer "dependent" on Russia for oil and natural gas. She wanted to push Russia's economy "back into the Soviet era". On 27 April 2022, Truss said that Western allies, including the UK, must "double down" and "keep going further and faster" to "push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine", including Crimea. In July 2022, she blamed Putin for the emerging global energy and food crises.

On 10 July 2022, Truss announced her intention to run in the Conservative Party leadership election to replace Boris Johnson. She pledged to cut taxes on day one if elected, and said she would "fight the election as a Conservative and govern as a Conservative", adding that she would also take "immediate action to help people deal with the cost of living". She said she would cancel a planned rise in corporation tax and reverse the recent increase in National Insurance rates, funded by delaying the date by which the national debt is planned to fall, as part of a "long-term plan to bring down the size of the state and the tax burden".

On 20 July, Truss and former chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak were chosen by Conservative Party MPs to be put forward to the membership for the final leadership vote. She finished second in the final MPs ballot, receiving 113 votes to Sunak's 137 votes. In the membership vote, it was announced on 5 September that 57.4% of ballots were for Truss, making her the new leader.

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