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Elizabeth Truss

The Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss was Britain's fourth prime minister in six years. Truss is the Conservative MP for South West Norfolk, and had been an MP continuously since 6 May 2010. She held the Government post of Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union. In addition, she was Leader of the Conservative Party.

Elizabeth Truss was appointed Prime Minister on 6 September 2022. She was previously Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs from 15 September 2021. She was appointed Minister for Women and Equalities on 10 September 2019. She was elected as the Conservative MP for south west Norfolk in 2010.

She announced on 20 October 2022 her resignation as Prime Minister, after 44 days in office, making her tenure as Prime Minister the shortest on record.

Elizabeth studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton College, Oxford. Elizabeth entered Parliament in 2010. She was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education and Childcare in September 2012. Elizabeth served as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from July 2014 until July 2016. Elizabeth was Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice from July 2016 until June 2017. She was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from June 2017 until July 2019. Elizabeth was previously Deputy Director at Reform. She also worked in the energy and telecommunications industry for 10 years as a commercial manager and economics director, and is a qualified management accountant.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has won the Conservative Party vote to be its new leader and became the country's new prime minister, replacing Boris Johnson at a time of economic upheaval and escalating energy bills. The 47-year-old Truss, who became the third woman to lead the country, defeated former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Britain's treasury secretary, in a vote of about 140,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, a mere 0.2% of the United Kingdom's population of 67 million.

The vote took place over the weeks after Johnson announced in July he would step down. The outgoing prime minister was engulfed in a series of scandals, including ignoring the government's own rules against public gatherings during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Truss served in Johnson's cabinet but was not part of the Tory attacks on Johnson that led to his eventual ouster as the party's leader and the end of his three years as prime minister.

Truss was not the first choice among Conservatives to lead the party but emerged in the intraparty voting in the House of Commons to be one of the two finalists in the vote among party members. She defeated Sunak by a final count of 81,326 to 60,399 among the 140,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, a mere 0.2% of the United Kingdom's population of 67 million. The intraparty vote, rather than a general election, was held because Conservatives still hold a majority in parliament and could pick the new prime minister of their choosing. Truss became the 15th leader of the United Kingdom during the long reign of its monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

Truss, once an opponent of pulling Britain from the European Union but now a staunch supporter of Brexit, holds hawkish foreign policy views and was expected, like Johnson, to remain a steadfast link in the Western alliance sending aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia's six-month-old invasion.

Unlike Johnson, who was well-known before taking the top political job in Britain, many people are still learning about Truss, who entered parliament in 2010. She became foreign secretary, one of the British government's top jobs, just one year ago.

In some ways, this is not constitutionally or historically unusual. Several previous foreign secretaries have taken over as prime minister, such as Anthony Eden (1955), Alec Douglas-Home (1963), James Callaghan (1976) and John Major (1990). Johnson himself was foreign secretary from 2016 to 2018. Indeed, the post of foreign secretary is often regarded as the most prestigious and senior role in the British government after the prime ministership.

It is also not unusual for the prime minister to change without a general election. Since 1974, every single British prime minister has either come into office or left office between general elections, with the last two — Theresa May and Johnson — doing both.

Truss was not especially popular with her backbenchers. Only 50 out of 358 Conservative members of parliament (MPs) voted for her in the first round of the leadership contest. Her ministerial record, although long, is pretty vacant of any accomplishments. In the final round of voting by MPs, she still was behind former Chancellor Rishi Sunak among her colleagues. That she got on the shortlist of two candidates to go to the national party vote was not inevitable.

Truss won by appealing to Conservative Party members, who are not be representative of Conservative voters more broadly, and are certainly not representative of the electorate in general. Although she may now break free of any sense of political obligation towards those who voted for her, it was more likely that she will govern from a partisan perspective with a like-minded cabinet, and with economic policies that made little sense. This may be the most partisan British government of modern times, at least in tone if not substantive policy. Truss, who became prime minister on September 6, initially installed a cabinet of senior ministers who were loyal to her libertarian wing of the Conservative Party.

Truss immediately faced severe economic problems, including a recession, labor turmoil, surging energy bills for British households and possible fuel shortages this coming winter. After her victory was announced, Truss told a party gathering, "I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative." She said "I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people's energy's bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply. And I will deliver on the national health service."

In her comments, Truss discussed a big concern of Britons: rising food and energy prices. The cost of fuel has gone up sharply in Great Britain over the last two years for two main reasons. First, there has been higher demand for energy as businesses around the world started up again in 2021 after shutting down for much of 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, prices rose again in early 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, which reduced the supply of gas and oil coming from Russia. Many nations decided to restrict their business with Russia when the war started. That drove prices up.

A package of unfunded tax cuts Truss' government announced Sept. 23 sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammered the value of the pound and increased the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis spreading to the wider economy and putting pensions at risk.

Truss sacked her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng on 14 October 2022 and scrapped parts of her economic package on tax cuts, which had proved to be a failure and drawn a huge wave of opposition. Truss then appointed Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign and health secretary who had backed Rishi Sunak over her, to replace Kwarteng, after weeks of financial turmoil and doubts over the recently proposed mini-budget.

Truss, who had been in office for just about 40 days, was fighting for her political survival as more than 100 members of parliament (MPs) belonging to her Conservative Party threatened to force her to step down as early as this week, amid the discontent over her chaotic economic strategy and pressure from the opposition Labour Party. The chaotic political situation in the UK underscored that the country's governance system was becoming increasingly inadequate for coping with a confluence of social and political challenges. The UK's national interests had been hijacked by the diverging self-interests of Parliamentary politicians and political party members and its institutional problems cannot be solved just by ousting Truss.

British interior minister Suella Braverman said on 19 October 2022 she had resigned after sending an official document from her personal email in a "technical infringement" of government rules. Former transport minister Grant Shapps has been appointed interior minister in her place. "I have made a mistake, I accept responsibility; I resign," she said in a letter to Prime Minister Liz Truss posted on Twitter. Braverman also said she had "serious concerns" about the government's commitment to honouring promises it made to voters at the last election. Braverman, appointed less than two months earlier, is a popular figure on the ruling Conservative Party's right wing and a champion of more restrictive immigration policies.

"It is obvious to everyone that we are going through a tumultuous time," Braverman said in the letter to Truss. "I have concerns about the direction of this government. Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this government's commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration," Braverman wrote.

Truss attended her first session of Prime Minister's Questions 19 October 2022 since newly appointed Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt ripped up the tax-cutting package unveiled by her new government less than a month ago. She apologised to Parliament and admitted she had made mistakes during her short tenure as the UK's head of government, but insisted that by changing course she had "taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country's economic stability".

With opinion polls giving the Labour Party a large and growing lead, many Conservatives now believed their only hope of avoiding electoral oblivion was to replace Truss. But she insists she is not stepping down, and legislators are divided about how to get rid of her. Truss faces another test in Parliament later when lawmakers vote on an opposition Labour Party motion seeking to ban fracking for shale gas — a policy Truss recently greenlit.

Under Conservative Party rules, Truss was safe from a leadership challenge for a year, but the rules can be changed if enough lawmakers want it. Some Conservative legislators also believe Truss could be forced to resign if the party agreed on a successor. As yet, there was no front-runner. Truss' defeated Conservative leadership rival Rishi Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and popular Defense Secretary Ben Wallace all have supporters, as does Hunt, who many see as the de facto prime minister already. Some even favor the return of Boris Johnson, who was ousted in the summer after becoming enmeshed in ethics scandals.

The Conservative Party will likely be faced with calls for an early election from the opposition if Truss cannot ease some of the nation's economic concerns. Ed Davey is a leader of the Liberal Democrats, a small opposition party. Davey said people are "really worried … losing sleep over their energy bills." Truss, however, does not have to call an election until December 2024. In the meantime, any controversial legislation — especially if not covered by the Conservative's 2019 manifesto — may get stuck in the upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords. Strident words may not have time to become striking achievements.

If Truss leads her party to defeat in the next general election, as is predicted by opinion polls, she will join other prime ministers who, having taken over mid-term, went on to be defeated, such as Callaghan (1979) and Gordon Brown (2010). That would not be unusual. To be sure, one should never underestimate any politician who climbs to the top of what Victorian statesman Benjamin Disraeli called "the greasy pole". Truss has managed to become prime minister, while hundreds of her contemporary politicians have not.