Liz Truss, 47, who led a very right-wing campaign focused on tax cuts, will become the third woman to lead the British government on Tuesday, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
Raised partly in Leeds in a left-wing family, Liz Truss made her political debut with the centrists of the Liberal Democrat party, where she stood out for an anti-monarchist rhetoric, before joining a few years later the conservative Party.
Her former Oxford University friend Mark Littlewood remembers her as a strong personality, who was already not afraid to assert herself.
“She was always outspoken.
She has always been a disruptor.
There was never any doubt at the University of his exact position on every subject and his opinion of many people.
And that hasn't really changed during her parliamentary career. Of course, at the time, she was a member of the Liberal Democrats.
But I don't think that has changed much either.
You really have to understand Elizabeth Truss as a kind of free-market liberal,” reveals Mark Littlewood, managing director of the IEA think tank.
Read alsoUnited Kingdom: Liz Truss, chosen to succeed Boris Johnson, becomes Prime Minister
Elected for the first time in 2010, Liz Truss entered the government of David Cameron two years later and chained ministerial posts.
In 2016, she campaigned to stay in the European Union, but quickly changed her tune after the referendum result.
Minister of Foreign Trade and then Foreign Affairs under Boris Johnson, she is at the forefront of post-Brexit negotiations where she positions herself as the "iron lady" of British diplomacy.
Then considered the rising star of the Conservative Party, she is often compared to Margaret Thatcher.
“She is seen as having the advantage of being able to change her mind, of being flexible.
I think for many Conservative members, she reminds them a bit of Mrs Thatcher, ”decrypts Tony Travers,
Remaining faithful to Boris Johnson to the end when the resignations within the executive were counted by the dozens, Liz Truss will make her entry into Downing Street in an explosive economic and social context, marked by inflation which exceeds 10% and skyrocketing energy bills strangling families, businesses and public services.
In this context, she has no respite to convince, two years before the 2024 legislative elections where the Labor opposition, which has a clear lead in the polls, hopes to dislodge the Conservatives in power since 2010. According to a recent YouGov poll, 52% of Britons believe that Liz Truss will be a bad or very bad Prime Minister.
