portrait
Status: 05.09.2022 2:25 p.m
Liz Truss has reached her goal: she succeeds Boris Johnson as Tory boss and thus also as Prime Minister. For this, Truss worked intensively on its image and was not always precise with the facts.
Liz Truss likes to appear ordinary, anti-elitist. Not a private school like so many other Conservative Party politicians have attended.
“I don’t come from the typical Conservative background. I grew up in Scotland and Leeds in Yorkshire. I went to a comprehensive school there. And there I saw how students were neglected.”
That’s how she liked to tell it during the election campaign appearances in the past few weeks and then explained: That’s what motivated her to go into politics.
The teachers back then disagree
Equal opportunities, meritocracy – in this anecdote she transports exactly this conservative model. Teachers and students from back then have long since spoken out and contradicted the image that may have emerged in Truss’s speeches. It was not a bad, run-down school that she attended, but one of the middle class, albeit not one of the elite.
A few weeks ago she had claimed that the administration at the time was shaped by Labor politicians. That was also refuted, the district was already in the hands of the conservatives at the time, and she refrained from making such statements in previous appearances.
Truss also appeared in Leeds during the election campaign – although not at her former school, but with her mother at her side
Image: REUTERS
The family background: rather left
Liz Truss fights hard with no regard for details. She was born Mary Elisabeth Truss in 1975 and has three brothers. The father was a professor of mathematics, the mother a nurse. Both were left leaning.
The mother also demonstrated for nuclear disarmament. It’s a big issue in Scotland, where the British Navy’s nuclear submarines are based. There was a lot of music and games at home. Monopoli and Cluedo, for example, as one of her brothers said in an interview. You always wanted to win and that’s why you cheated before.
Truss studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, joined the Liberal Democrat university group and became chairman there. She gave a speech in which she spoke out in favor of the republic and against the monarchy.
She dealt with the economically liberal ideas, for example by Friedrich August von Hayek, which had also influenced Margaret Thatcher. In 1996 she joined the Conservative Party and worked, among other things, for the energy company Shell. She ran twice unsuccessfully, finally moving into the House of Commons in 2010.
First against, then for Brexit
As an MP, Truss initially campaigned for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union. In 2016, after Britain voted to leave, she changed her mind. She became Minister of Justice, later Foreign Minister.
Your stance on Brexit? The chances of leaving must finally be implemented, she says today. And in order to boost growth, all the hurdles that Brussels has imposed are to be removed by the end of 2023, she announced during the election campaign.
As bold as possible
Many of their promises now sound like those Boris Johnson once made. For example in the Ukraine policy: She wants to continue to ensure rapid support for the Ukrainian military.
The party base likes bold statements, binding promises. With a recession, high gas prices and inflation forecast, Truss will have to deliver immediately – or quickly lose favor with the party.