Liz Truss has been elected as the new leader of the Conservative party and will be named as the next prime minister on Tuesday after she meets the Queen in Balmoral. Here is a chronological look at her rise to power.
26 July 1975
Born in Oxford, to Priscilla Mary Truss, a nurse, and John Kenneth, a professor of maths. Truss has described both parents as being “to the left of Labour”.
1980s
Attends marches, with her mother, by supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Truss has recalled a protest at the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland, where the chant was “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out”.
1993
After her early education, which included time living in Paisley, Leeds and Canada, she attends Oxford University, where she reads philosophy, politics and economics and becomes active in student politics with the Liberal Democrats.
1994
Makes a political debut at the Liberal Democrat conference where she delivers an impassioned speech backing a motion calling for the abolition of the monarchy. She later joins the Conservative party, attending Tory conference in 1997. By now she is working for Shell and qualifies as an accountant in 1999.
2000
Marries fellow accountant Hugh O’Leary – with whom she later has two children – in the same year as she is employed by Cable & Wireless, where she rises to become economic director.
January 2008
Becomes the full-time deputy director of the right-of-centre thinktank Reform. Her work includes co-authoring a 2009 paper promoting government spending cuts including slashing doctors’ pay and calling for patients to be charged to see their GP.
16 November 2009
After being put on David Cameron’s “A-list” of priority candidates backed by his leadership in a drive to modernise the party, Truss survives an attempt by Conservative activists in Norfolk to deselect her after it emerges that she had an affair with a Tory MP five years previously.
6 May 2010
After a number of failed bids to win council seats and safe Labour constituencies, she finally enters parliament as Tory MP for rural South West Norfolk. Two years later she becomes an education minister in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
29 September 2014
Gives one of her more unforgettable conference addresses in her first cabinet post as environment secretary, bemusing listeners with a speech full of pregnant pauses, stares and a claim that Britain importing two-thirds of its cheese was “a disgrace”.
15 May 2016
Campaigning for the remain side before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, Truss writes an article for the Sun in which she warns that Brexit would be “a triple tragedy – more rules, more forms and more delays when selling to the EU”.
12 June 2017
Amid criticism from lawyers and suspicions in Theresa May’s team that she is a serial leaker of cabinet Brexit talks, Truss is sacked after failing, as lord chancellor, to defend judges accused of being “enemies of the people” when they ruled that the PM needed parliamentary approval to trigger the Brexit process. She is demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury.
15 September 2021
Her rebirth as a Brexit ultra, and yards gained as a Johnson loyalist, pay off when she is appointed as foreign secretary. A future leadership run is prepared with “fizz with Liz” soirees, designed to schmooze Tory MPs, and photo opportunities in poses inviting comparisons to Margaret Thatcher.
11 July 2022
Joins the race to replace Boris Johnson, but struggles with the first televised hustings and trails behind Penny Mordaunt. Her campaign includes the announcement of a proposed package of tax cuts amounting to about £30bn a year.
20 July 2022
Truss beats Mordaunt to secure a place in the runoff against Rishi Sunak after improving in televised hustings as well as attaining vocal and growing support from Johnson loyalists. Polls consistently suggest she has maintained a clear lead over Sunak – though amid the cost of living crisis, he may conclude it was a good one to lose.
