- By Shivam Shandilya
- Mon, 05 Sep 2022 05:52 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Lizz Truss is the UK's 56th Prime Minister and the third female prime minister to lead the country after Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher. Truss was chosen by the Conservative Party members as their leader and the UK's prime minister. Truss, who secured 81,326 votes, defeated Indian-origin Rishi Sunak, who got 60,399 votes, to become the new UK prime minister.
Here's all you need to know:
1. Lizz Truss was born in Oxford in 1975 and named Mary Elizabeth Truss. She is the eldest of four siblings and the only girl child of her parents. Her father, John Kenneth Truss, was a mathematics professor at the University of Leeds, and her mother, Priscilla Mary, was a teacher and nurse.
2. Her family later relocated to Leeds, where she attended Roundhay, a state secondary school, before going to Oxford to study philosophy, politics, and economics, where she was active in student politics as a Lib-Dem member.
3.Truss switched to the Conservatives while at Oxford and joined the party in 1996, when factionalism was rampant under John Major's leadership. She met her future husband, Hugh O'Leary, an accountant, at a Conservative Party convention the following year, and they married in 2000.
4. Truss contested as a Conservative party candidate in the 2001 general election in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, but lost. She was defeated again in 2005 when she ran for a seat in west Yorkshire called Calder Valley. But her desire to work in politics persisted, and she was elected as a councillor in Greenwich in 2006. She joined the right-wing Reform think tank two years later.
5. Truss was introduced to Mark Field, the party's MP for Cities of London and Westminster, as a mentor and to assist her in securing a more winnable seat in the next election. However, the two became involved in an affair, which resulted in Field's 12-year marriage ending in divorce while hers survived.
6. Her 18-month affair, however, nearly cost her a seat in parliament from the Tory safe seat of South West Norfolk, due to strong opposition from local Tory members who wanted her replaced for concealing her affair from the selection committee.
7. She has served under three prime ministers and held six ministerial posts before becoming the first female Lord Chancellor in 2016 — the highest officer of the Crown.
8. She joined the government as an education minister in 2012, just two years after becoming an MP, and as an environment secretary in 2014.
9. Truss was appointed international trade secretary after Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. As secretary, she was required to travel around the world to negotiate trade deals with global political and business leaders.
10. She was appointed foreign secretary in 2021, one of the most senior positions in the government. Unlike Sunak and many other senior ministers, Truss' candidacy has found favour with Boris Johnson supporters, as she has not switched sides and has not criticised the Johnson premiership.