who is she exactly?
Well, apparently she’s our first ever Prime Minister to have attended a comprehensive school, only she isn’t as that particular honour goes to Theresa May. Ah, okay but she’s a lady who’s not for turning and doesn’t give a fig about being popular, until, at the first sign of trouble, she’s the one grabbing the handbrake and blaming it all on poor Kwasi. In the co-authored Britannia Unchained she lamented that “the British are among the worst idlers in the world” only to row back and claim she neither wrote those words nor held that sentiment. A steadfast hard-line Remainer during the Brexit referendum she now states she was, deep down, always Eurosceptic and had been strong armed by Davey Boy and Gorgeous George. Claiming to unite the party, it’s emerged that despite telling Grant Shapps he was ‘a highly competent minister and the government’s best communicator’ he’s immediately sacked and shown the backbench door. An accountant by trade she places no onus upon the detailed analysis of the OBR. As a kitten-bowed Iron lady lookalike she failed to secure one single vote in her primary school’s mock election and didn’t even vote for herself. And yet it all began so promisingly.
Mary Elizabeth Truss was born into a liberal middle-class family with a professor of mathematics father and nurse/teacher mother. As a child, young Liz would eagerly accompany them to anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common and was proud to declare herself to all and sundry an anti-monarchist. Reading Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at Oxford she quickly assumed the venerable position of president of the Lib Dems and, having caught the eye of the then party leader, Paddy Pantsdown, billed herself as a ‘professional controversialist’.
It all seemed to take a turn for the worse in the mid-90s when, after a trip to eastern Europe, she wheeled about to become a Tory councillor in Greenwich and set her sights on a place at the top table. Notwithstanding the subsequent eighteen month affair with her political mentor, Mark Field, this was achieved, third time lucky, when she was finally selected by the ‘Turnip Taliban’ (as she dubbed them) to represent South West Norfolk.
Her ministerial career appeared uneventful until Gideon Osborne took her under his austerity wing and made her the youngest ever female environmental secretary. A bizarre and barely credible ‘cheese’ speech at the 2014 party conference brought her to everyone’s attention for all the wrong reasons and she was, incredulously, moved sideways to the justice department before finally being put out of her misery and demoted by Mother Theresa. In reality, that should’ve signalled the end of Liz’s aspirations but, by sheer force of will and with an admirable thickness of skin, her bounce back started afresh.
Being the first to pin her flag to the post of HMS Boris, she was rewarded with the international trade secretary’s role and the rest is history. Many, specifically within her own party, have expressed doubts about her judgement and her grasp of policy detail, and these now seem well-founded. Why, even Specsavers’ favourite son, Dominic Cummings labelled her “as close to properly crackers as anybody I have ever met in parliament”. Come back Boris, I’m prepared to forget all about the gold-flocked wallpaper, all is forgiven.
