Liz Truss favourite to beat Rishi Sunak, become UK PM, say bookies: Report

Liz Truss has undergone a political reinvention to become the favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party and UK Prime Minister.

The Foreign Secretary campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union before embracing Brexit with the zeal of a convert after the vote went the other way. And she’s gone from yelling slogans as a child against Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Conservative government and leading Oxford University’s Liberal Democrat society to become the darling of the Tory Party right.

“My parents were left-wing activists, and I’ve been on a political journey ever since,” Truss said in an ITV debate of Tory leadership candidates on Sunday. On Thursday, she told BBC radio that she’d got it wrong on Brexit.

Now, Truss stands six weeks — and one ballot — away from claiming the top job in UK politics, with only former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak standing in her way. British bookmakers have installed her as the favorite, and polling of party members by YouGov suggests she’ll soundly defeat her opponent in the runoff vote among the party grassroots.

Truss — who’ll turn 47 next week — has appealed to the right wing of her party through her libertarianism, trumpeting the value of free markets, backing low taxation and repeatedly railing against the “nanny state” interfering in the lives of ordinary Britons.

She’s won admirers among ardent Brexiteers by challenging the EU over the Brexit deal struck by Johnson’s own government, introducing a bill overriding the bulk of its provisions on Northern Ireland.

Even while protesting loyalty to Johnson, the foreign secretary has done little to disguise her ambitions to claim the top job, schmoozing with colleagues in social events known as “fizz with Liz” and running a carefully-curated instagram feed that rivaled the social media operation run by Sunak’s team.

She’s also unashamedly invited comparisons with Thatcher, the Tory icon she once protested against. That includes posing in a tank in eastern Europe — much as the former premier did on a visit to British forces in Germany in 1986.

Truss reached the final two after trailing Sunak and Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt in the first four rounds of voting among Tory MPs; only managing to overhaul Mordaunt in a tight fifth vote. A political survivor, she’s the longest-serving member of the government, holding ministerial posts since 2012, and serving in the cabinet since 2014, under three prime ministers.

She was born in 1975 to left-wing parents, and as well as attending anti-Thatcher protests, she’s talked of joining them on demonstrations against nuclear weapons.

Truss grew up in Scotland and then Leeds, where she attended a comprehensive school before going on to Oxford University to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She then worked for Shell as an industrial economist before moving to Cable & Wireless and the think-tank Reform.

The Truss ‘Stare’

She served for four years as a councilor in southeast London, before entering Parliament as the MP representing South West Norfolk in 2010. The then prime minister, David Cameron, gave her her first ministerial post at the Department for Education in September 2012, before promoting her to the cabinet as environment secretary in 2014.

Stints as justice secretary, chief secretary to the Treasury and trade secretary followed, before her promotion last year to foreign secretary, one of the four “great offices of state” in British politics. On Thursday, she told BBC radio that her cabinet experience has equipped her for the top job.

“What I’ve shown is I am tough under pressure,” Truss said. “I’ve dealt with some of the worst floods for a generation, I’ve dealt with the worst prison riots since Strangeways, I’ve dealt with the worst war in Europe.”

Despite her lengthy tenure in the cabinet, Truss has at times struggled to be taken seriously by colleagues, the press and public. She was mocked for a 2014 speech in which she declared it a “disgrace” that the UK imports most of its cheese, a comment that featured in a compilation video of her “finest moments” that circulated this week on Twitter.

Truss also has a reputation for awkwardness, according to conversations by Bloomberg with more than a dozen people who know her. Tories spoke of her “stare” — a habit of looking directly into the eyes of the other person in a conversation and smiling, without speaking, for several seconds. Allies suggest it is an attempt at being friendly. Others describe it as unnerving.

Tax Cuts

Others said she’s renowned among civil servants for trying to dominate meetings by interjecting when officials are speaking to bluntly tell them that she completely disagrees.

Several people who have worked closely with Truss said it’s hard to know her true personal opinions on various political and policy issues. She failed to convince EU officials that she understood the details in negotiations with them, and they were left unimpressed with her attempts to appear tough in meetings with Brussels counterpart Maros Sefcovic, one said.

Truss’s spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment. She herself conceded during Sunday’s debate that she “might not be the slickest presenter.”

But Truss’s allies point to her relatability — she’s presented herself as coming from humble beginnings. When asked by Sunak during Sunday’s televised debate whether she regretted being a Lib Dem or remainer more, Truss took a swipe at his education at one of the most elite private schools in the country, contrasting it with her own education at a state school where she said children got “let down.”

Her plans to cut taxes by roughly £34 billion ($41 billion) and criticisms of Sunak for choking growth were welcomed by those on the right of the party, though her plan to fund this with higher borrowing caused concern among others. She’s also pledged lower public spending — popular among small-state conservatives — and repeatedly pointed to deals she negotiated while trade secretary.

In a swipe at Sunak, Truss told the BBC she’s not “the continuity economic policy candidate” because “that is where we didn’t get it right.”

Those promises helped win the backing of enough Tory MPs — including Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries — to see her into the final vote among the party’s 175,000 members.

She’s long been popular with those grassroots, topping the ConservativeHome league table of cabinet ministers for a year until February. In the most recent one earlier this month, based on a survey of party members, she ranked third, with a rating of 49. Sunak’s was minus 3 — beating only Johnson.