But as most polls suggest she’s on the cusp of getting the keys to 10 Downing Street, her critics are wondering: What exactly does she stand for?
Many who have observed her over the years wonder if she has any sincere beliefs at all, or if she is simply endorsing what is most convenient at the time.
To say Truss has been on a political journey would be an understatement. She was born in 1975 into a family she herself has described as the ‘Left of Labour’, the main socialist opposition. Growing up in parts of the UK that traditionally did not vote Conservative, she moved between Scotland and the north of England.
Unlike her privately trained cabinet colleagues, Truss attended a state school in Leeds and later won a place at Oxford University. There she was an active member of the Liberal Democrats, a centrist opposition party that has long been an effective opponent of the Conservatives in much of England.
During her time as a Liberal Democrat, Truss supported the legalization of cannabis and the abolition of the royal family — positions that are completely at odds with what most would consider mainstream conservatism in 2022.
Truss says she joined the Conservatives in 1996, just two years after giving a speech at a Liberal Democrat conference calling for the end of the monarchy.
Even then, fellow Liberal Democrats questioned her sincerity and discovered traits they still see in her today.
“I honestly think she was playing for the gallery back then, whether she was talking about decriminalizing drugs or abolishing the monarchy,” said Neil Fawcett, a Liberal Democrat councilor who campaigned with Truss in the 1990s. , to DailyExpertNews. “I think she’s someone who plays for the gallery with whatever audience she’s talking to, and I really don’t know if she ever believes anything she says, then or now.”
Truss has certainly continued to grab the attention of her audience. Since joining the Conservatives and becoming a member of Parliament, she has fervently supported almost every ideology imaginable. She served loyally under three prime ministers in various cabinet positions and is currently foreign minister.
Notably, in 2016, she supported staying in the European Union. At the time, Truss tweeted that she supported those who wanted to stay in the bloc because “it’s in Britain’s economic interest and we can focus on essential economic and social reform at home.”
Truss now supports Brexit, saying her fears before the referendum that it could cause “disruption” were false. The aspiring Tory leader is even threatening to scrap all remaining EU legislation in the UK and ignore the Brexit deal Johnson negotiated with Brussels in a way the EU believes is illegal. She has also blamed France and the EU for border controls at Dover, the main port between the UK and France.
There is a debate within the Conservative Party about how real this support for Euroscepticism really is. Some think Truss reluctantly followed the government’s orders at the time of the 2016 referendum, which was against Brexit. Others find that argument unthinkable.
Anna Soubry, a former Conservative minister, told DailyExpertNews that Truss had “the most coverage of any of us supporting Brexit. Her brief at the time included the farming community, who supported Brexit in general. I sat around the cabinet table and heard the reason for everyone to do what they did and find it hard to believe she’s changed her mind so much.”
On the other hand, Gavin Barwell, who served as chief of staff to former Prime Minister Theresa May, said that after the Brexit vote, “Truss made a decision very quickly that there was no room for compromise. If you were to do it, it had to be completely And as the stalemate continued, she argued there would be a binary choice between leaving without a deal and Brexit being rolled back, the latter being catastrophic for the government.”
The closer she gets to power, the more Brits wonder what a Truss premiership would look like. She has campaigned to lead the most conservative agendas. She has pledged to cut taxes from day one, shred EU regulations and boost private sector growth with low corporate taxes. She has said she will not impose a windfall tax on energy companies, despite making huge gains during the cost of living and energy crisis.
This kind of policy is, of course, red meat for the conservative members who will eventually vote for it. And while some of those who know her wonder how much she really believes in them, there is no doubt that she will make every effort to implement them and make her impact felt immediately.
A journalist and speechwriter to former Prime Minister David Cameron, Julian Glover was a university contemporary of Truss and recalls qualities in her that are still recognizable today: determined but unfocused.
“We only passed briefly and she was in a different year than I was, but nevertheless she stands in my memory as a kind of strange, unfocused force, huge supporter of action and change,” Glover said. “It was always difficult to see the purpose of all this, or where it would lead, except that she would be in the middle of it.”
Roger Crouch, who succeeded Truss as president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats, told DailyExpertNews he remembers a woman who was “determined, determined and willing to challenge the orthodox and prevailing, often masculine, wisdom.”
Unlike many of those who knew Truss in her younger days, Crouch, who is now a teacher, thinks her opinion hasn’t changed much since the 1990s. “Liz was always more of a privatizing, libertarian liberal, so there’s a consistent line of thought there. I remember a student discussion group where she advocated privatizing lampposts.”
If she wins, Truss will have a hard time uniting her party, which has been in power for 12 years and for six of them is bitterly divided over Brexit.
She will also have to navigate the country through its worst cost of living crisis in decades. Inflation is at its 40-year high, energy bills are expected to rise by hundreds, possibly thousands, of pounds a year and the UK is expected to slip into recession before the end of the year. This winter, many families will have to make a difficult choice between eating or heating. And for a party that has been in power for more than a decade, it’s hard to blame it on anyone else.
Her supporters see a chance for a new start in Truss. They believe that with Brexit out of the way and the scandals that led to Johnson’s downfall will soon be a distant memory, the party will turn its focus to staying in power and winning a historic fifth consecutive general election.
For her opponents, it’s more complicated. During this leadership contest, those who have supported her rivals feel they have been unfairly vilified simply for arguing that Truss should be given the keys to Downing Street.
And for all Truss’s determination and determination, if she takes over a party torn by infighting and suffering in the polls during a cost of living crisis that took place under the auspices of the Conservatives, she might find her main goal too difficult. task to achieve: to make her party eligible in the next general election after nearly a decade and a half in power.
This story has been updated to correct the number of recent elections that the Conservative Party has won. If Truss leads them to victory, it will be the party’s fifth consecutive win.