Liz Truss consolidates management of overseas coverage with Brexit portfolio

Simply months into her new function as Overseas Secretary, Liz Truss has secured one other main portfolio.

Promoted by the Prime Minister to one of many nice places of work of state throughout his top-team reshuffle in September, Ms Truss has once more been rewarded – this time with the portfolio of Brexit minister beforehand dealt with by David Frost.

Nonetheless, some have urged the transfer could actually be an try by Boris Johnson to land a possible future management contender with a poison chalice.

Lord Frost resigned from the function with instant impact on Saturday, citing disagreements with the Authorities’s stance on lockdown restrictions, taxation and regulation.

A remainer in 2016, Ms Truss, 46, has been richly rewarded for embracing Brexit within the wake of the referendum consequence.

She has gone from being mocked about her outrage over cheese imports to being the most well-liked cupboard minister with the Tory Get together membership – and a future contender for chief of the social gathering.

Whereas the Authorities confronted robust headlines about impasse within the negotiations with the European Union in the course of the Brexit transition interval, Ms Truss made regular work of rolling over a bunch of commerce offers for the UK, guaranteeing the phrases agreed whereas an EU member have been able to proceed after exiting the bloc.

A much-coveted commerce cope with the US might need eluded her, however she gained plaudits within the Conservative Get together for securing new phrases with Japan and Australia, whereas a New Zealand settlement is alleged to be nearing completion.

To safe the phrases with Canberra, Ms Truss’s free-trade beliefs have been mentioned to have gained out towards the protectionism instincts of different ministers, corresponding to Atmosphere Secretary George Eustice particularly when it got here to meals imports.

Her Labour critics, nonetheless, say the Cupboard minister didn’t ship a “single commerce deal that we didn’t have already got contained in the EU”, calling the reward inside Authorities for her efficiency overblown.

With Dominic Raab faraway from the Overseas Workplace after his botched dealing with of the Afghanistan withdrawal, Boris Johnson has turned to a trusted ally in his newest reshuffle.

Ms Truss was an early backer of Mr Johnson in the course of the Tory management race in 2019, a call that helped her snare a promotion from chief secretary to the Treasury to heading up the Division for Worldwide Commerce.

A vocal Remainer in the course of the EU referendum, studies recommend No 10 has been impressed with the way in which she has embraced post-Brexit alternatives and commerce reforms.

The married mother-of-two, whose relationship survived an affair with former Tory MP Mark Area earlier than her election to the Commons, boasts a powerful CV, defying her upbringing by left-leaning mother and father to carry posts corresponding to schooling minister, setting secretary and justice secretary in earlier Conservative governments.

Away from politics, Ms Truss’s aptitude for social media has seen her supply an perception into the girl behind the politician by updating her Instagram account with footage of her stress-free on the seaside, or behind the scenes at official occasions.

Infamously, the worlds of social media and politics mixed in 2014, when her improbably enthusiastic speech about opening pork markets in Beijing went viral, pilloried on satirical programmes corresponding to Have I Bought Information For You?

She prompted additional hilarity when telling the Tory Get together convention that 12 months: “We import two-thirds of our cheese, that may be a shame.”

Introduced up in Yorkshire, Ms Truss studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton Faculty, Oxford, the place she grew to become president of the College Liberal Democrats.

Elected to Parliament in 2010, she beforehand labored within the vitality and telecommunications business and is a certified administration accountant.