Liz served as the 56th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and continuously held ministerial office for more than ten years between 2012 and 2022. After an initial spell as a junior education minister, Liz sat at the Cabinet table in six different roles, prior to becoming Prime Minister: Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Chief Secretary to the Treasury; Secretary of State for International Trade; and Foreign Secretary – as well as Minister for Women and Equalities.
In July 2022, Liz entered the race to become leader of the Conservative Party and succeeded Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, after winning an overwhelming mandate from Conservative Party members and the support of the majority of MPs declaring a preference during the final stage.
As Prime Minister, Liz sought to get Britain growing again through supply side reforms such as tax cuts and fracking – whilst cutting the size of government and taking on the unelected state.
She led the nation in mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II and in marking the first accession of a new monarch in 70 years.
Born in 1975 and raised in Paisley and Leeds, Liz grew up observing first-hand failing Labour-run local authorities. She embarked on a career as an economist and accountant after graduating from Oxford and also became increasingly involved in politics, having joined the Conservative Party shortly after leaving university. She served as a councillor in the London Borough of Greenwich between 2006 and 2010, when she was elected to Parliament for the first time to represent South West Norfolk.
As a backbencher, she served on the Justice Select Committee and was Founder and Convenor of the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs, where she worked with parliamentary colleagues to argue for a low-tax, low-regulation, free-market policy agenda that would help promote economic growth, boost enterprise and deliver increased prosperity for all – themes which define her overarching political vision to this day. During this time she was also co-author of two books, After The Coalition and Britannia Unchained.
In 2012 Liz was made minister at the Department for Education where she took on the leftist education establishment and toughened up maths exams, including banning the use of calculators in tests for 11-year-olds. Her attempts to deregulate childcare and increase parental power were thwarted by the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives’ partners in the Coalition Government at the time.
Promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2014, Liz backed farmers and fishermen against an increasingly aggressive climate lobby. She handled the most serious floods the country had seen for decades and increased the size of the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District National Parks.
Between 2016 and 2017 she served as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, in which role she set about recruiting an additional 2,500 frontline staff to transform prisons into places of hard work, discipline and self-improvement, made it easier for victims to give evidence in trials without coming face-to-face with an attacker in open court and introduced a new offence targeting adults grooming children for sexual exploitation.
Liz was appointed to the Treasury in 2017, serving as Chief Secretary for more than two years. Her duties there involved keeping a watchful eye on the public finances and driving productivity in public services, so that taxpayer value for money would be delivered with every pound spent.
With the UK able to dictate its own trade policy for the first time since 1972 following the UK’s exit from the European Union, in July 2019 Liz was appointed Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. She established the UK’s first independent tariff regime in more than 40 years as the country once again was able to take its own seat at the World Trade Organisation.
She negotiated dozens of key trade deals with important partners such as Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, kicked off negotiations with the U.S. and submitted the UK’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership
After being given additional responsibilities as Minister for Women and Equalities, she stood up against identity politics and cancelled plans for gender self-identification without medical checks. She promoted a Conservative approach to equality based on ‘the core principles of freedom, choice, opportunity, and individual humanity and dignity’.
In September 2021 Liz was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. She secured the release of British national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from an Iranian jail after nearly six years in captivity. With responsibility for post-Brexit relations with the European Union, Liz also introduced the legislation to address the practical problems created by the Northern Ireland Protocol.
At the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, she promoted the development of a network of liberty, bringing together freedom-loving nations around the globe in challenging authoritarian regimes. She took to task the Chinese Government over its threats to national security and actions in Hong Kong; and then, after eyeballing Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in Moscow to warn of the consequences of invading Ukraine, she imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia following its defiant action.
She branded Putin’s regime ‘an international pariah’ when she summoned Russia’s Ambassador to the UK to the Foreign Office and swiftly became a leading figure in the international alliance providing support to Ukraine and its people in their hour of need, including ensuring that the UK was the first country in Europe to send weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces.
After becoming Prime Minister in September 2022, the following two months were to prove both a momentous and tempestuous period: she took immediate and decisive action to support people and businesses with their energy bills, to accelerate domestic energy supply and to increase the UK’s energy resilience. However just two days after she entered Downing Street, the country was rocked by the death of Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III acceded to the throne.
After leading the nation in mourning Her Late Majesty, Liz set about implementing her Plan for Growth, including a raft of tax cuts to kick-start economic growth and reforms to boost productivity.
These policies were undermined by the Bank of England and fellow Conservative MPs, generating market turmoil. The Bank of England has since admitted that two thirds of the market spike was down to its failings.
She reached the conclusion that she could not deliver the mandate on which she had been elected and stepped down.
Ten Years To Save The West, published in April 2024, is a Sunday Times bestseller.
She lives in London and Norfolk with her husband and two daughters.
You can keep up with Liz’s activity by following her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The paperback edition of Liz Truss’ Sunday Times Bestseller, Ten Years to Save the West, is out now. This updated edition includes new chapters reflecting on why the Conservatives lost the general election and how the right must now regroup.