Anti British Royal Family, Liz Truss, to Become UK’s 3rd Female Premier

From an opposition councilor on a Labor-dominated local authority, to the biggest job of them all, Liz Truss was among the few around Westminster who allowed themselves to dream of becoming prime minister, and the dream became reality.

Receiving more than 57% of party members' votes, Truss has become the UK prime minister leaving contender Rishi Sunak behind.

She has come to power during the worst economic crisis since the Thatcher era, and she will need all her ideological dexterity to make it through.

 

Boris Johnson's Successor

Truss called once for a referendum to abolish the British monarchy, telling an audience of fellow Liberal Democrats: “We do not believe that people should be born to rule.”

Today, Liz Truss, the UK Foreign Secretary, has won the Tory leadership race, after the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee announcement.

According to the committee chairman Sir Graham Brady, the new PM got 81,326 votes from the party members, whereas Rishi Sunak, her contender, received only 60,399.

Truss is to become the third female prime minister of the United Kingdom after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

Tomorrow, September 6, 2022, the UK’s new PM is expected to receive the duty of forming a new government from Queen Elizabeth II in the Scottish castle to complete “a political odyssey from rabble-rousing republican to tradition-cloaked leader of the Conservative Party,” as described by NYT.

After her victory announcement, Truss thanked, in her speech, her supporters and her contender as well, saying the campaign showed the “breadth and depth of talent in the Conservative Party.”

The new PM did not forget to pay tribute to the outgoing premier, “my friend Boris Johnson,” who was under too much pressure amid a series of scandals.

“Boris, you got Brexit done. You crushed [former Labor Party leader] Jeremy Corbyn, you rolled out the [COVID-19] vaccine. And you stood up to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. You were admired from Kyiv to Carlisle,” she said.

 

A Glimpse of Her Life

Liz Truss, 47, is a wife and a mother of two daughters, and was born in 1975 into a family that she was describing as "to the left of Labor," Britain's main left-wing party. In contrast with her cabinet colleagues who were privately educated, Truss was studying at a state school in the Yorkshire city of Leeds, and later won a place at Oxford University where she was a passionate 19-year-old student and an active member of the Liberal Democrats.

During that time, Liz Truss supported the end of the British monarchy. She joined the Conservatives two years after she gave a speech at a Liberal Democrat conference calling for the abolition of the royal family. This led many of her

peers to doubt about her sincerity and spotted traits “that they say they still see in her today.”

“I honestly think she was playing to the gallery back then, whether she was talking about decriminalizing drugs or abolishing the monarchy," Neil Fawcett, a Liberal Democrat councilor who campaigned with Truss in the 1990s, told CNN. "I think she is someone who plays to the gallery with whatever audience she is talking to, and I genuinely don't know if she ever believes anything she says, then or now."

She has served as the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs since 2021 and Minister for Women and Equalities since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss has been Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010. She has served in various Cabinet positions under Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

Truss served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education from 2012 to 2014, before being appointed to the Cabinet by Cameron as Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the 2014 cabinet reshuffle. 

Though she was a supporter of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum, she supported Brexit after the result. After Cameron resigned in July 2016, Truss was appointed Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor by May, becoming the first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the office.

 

To-Do List

During her victory speech, Truss turned her attention to her party, and said: “Friends and colleagues, thank you for putting your faith in me to lead our great Conservative Party, the greatest political party on Earth.”

After listing her priorities, she said: “During this leadership campaign, I campaigned as a Conservative and I will govern as a conservative.

“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 bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply. And I will deliver on the National Health Service.”

“But we all will deliver for our country. And I will make sure that we use all the fantastic talents of the Conservative party, our brilliant members of parliament and peers, our fantastic counselors…all of our councilors and activists and members right across our country. Because, my friends, I know that we will deliver, we will deliver and we will deliver. And we will deliver a great victory for the Conservative Party in 2024,” she continued.

There is no honeymoon period for Liz Truss, as the country is uproariously waiting for answers to big questions that Boris Johnson’s government felt unempowered to handle.