Liz Truss Biography, Age, Marriage, Scandal, Net Worth, and Career

Husband and Children

Truss wed fellow accountant Hugh O’Leary in 2000; the two are parents to two daughters.

She had an extramarital relationship with married MP Mark Field, who the Conservative Party had designated as her political mentor, from 2004 until mid-2005. However, her marriage with O’Leary survived the affair.

Education

Truss was president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats and a student at Oxford’s Merton College. She earned her degree and joined the Conservative Party in 1996.

Career before politics

Truss worked at Shell from 1996 to 2000, during which time she earned her Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) certification in 1999.

Truss started working for Cable & Wireless in 2000 and advanced to the position of economic director before leaving in 2005.

After losing her first two elections, Truss became the full-time deputy director of Reform in January 2008, where she advocated more rigorous academic standards in schools, a greater focus on tackling serious and organized crime, and urgent action to deal with Britain’s falling competitiveness.

She co-authored The Value of Mathematics, Fit for Purpose, A New Level, and Back To Black: Budget 2009 Paper, among other reports.

Political Career

Truss was elected for South West Norfolk at the 2010 general election. As a backbencher, she called for reform in several policy areas, including childcare, mathematics education, and the economy.

She founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and wrote or co-wrote several papers and books, including After the Coalition (2011) and Britannia Unchained (2012).
Before she won the seat of the UK’s PM, she served as the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs in 2021 and Minister for Women and Equalities in 2019.

A member of the Conservative Party, she has been a 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 supported 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.

Following the 2017 general election, Truss was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. After May resigned in 2019, Truss supported Johnson’s bid to become Conservative leader.
He appointed Truss as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade.

She took on the additional Minister for Women and Equalities role in September 2019. She moved from the Department for International Trade to be promoted to Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle. She was appointed the Government’s chief negotiator with the European Union and UK chair of the EU–UK Partnership Council in December 2021.

Truss won the Conservative Party leadership election on 5 September 2022, beating her rival Rishi Sunak.

On September 5, 2022, After Boris Johnson steps down as prime minister of the United Kingdom on July 7, 2022, Liz Truss—the third woman to hold the position—will take over.

After a two-month campaign, she defeated Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), with the help of Conservative Party members.

Truss has promised to deliver £30 billion in tax cuts through an emergency Budget later this month, arguing the UK’s tax burden is behind sluggish growth. She joined the contest with ten others, who were gradually reduced to 2, after Boris Johnson resigned due to losing the trust of many of his allies.

This saw Johnson’s government engulfed in a number of scandals, ranging from the Party Gate Scandal to allegations of corruption after a WhatsApp message revealed he had solicited donations from a member of his party to fund the refurbishment of his Downing Street residence.

Truss has pledged to deliver low-regulation investment zones and bring about the biggest increase in defence spending in decades. She also abandoned a plan to link public sector pay to local living costs, after a backlash from unions, Labour and some Tories.

To handle the energy price crisis in the UK, Truss had also promised to announce a plan to deal with soaring energy costs within a week, if elected, adding that further support would need to go “hand in hand” with a plan to boost domestic energy supplies, arguing the UK had become too dependent on international energy prices.

Her plans if elected have also come with criticisms as Financial Times declared that the rising cost of government debt and Liz Truss’s promises on tax cuts and defence spending will blow a £60 billion hole in the public finances by the middle of the decade.

Labour Party also warned that her plans will push through a “huge stealth tax cut for banks”, Pat McFadden, shadow Treasury minister, says her cuts of corporation taxes to boost UK’s economic growth will come at an estimated £17 billion cost to the exchequer, citing that scrapping Sunak’s corporation tax rise and keeping the 5 percentage point cut in the bank surcharge would be a big tax cut for big banks in the midst of an economic crisis.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s Business Secretary and Truss ally said her government will take immediate action if elected that “will help people with the challenges we face in the coming months, and lay the groundwork for the change we need in the long term. This means cutting taxes, putting money back into people’s pockets and unshackling our businesses from burdensome taxes and unsuitable regulation”.