Liz Truss (Mary Elizabeth Truss) could become the first management accountant to hold the post of UK Prime Minster.
A YouGov poll shows Truss has a 62% to 38% lead over Rishi Sunak in the race to become Conservative Party Leader, with the winner being announced on 5 September after a vote by the party members.
A former Liberal Democrat, the Oxford graduate joined Shell in 1996 on their accountancy graduate scheme and qualified as a CIMA, before joining Cable & Wireless. During her five years at Cable & Wireless she rose to economic director. She then became the full-time deputy director of Reform in January 2008.
Her father was a professor of pure maths at Leeds University and her mother was a nurse. Truss has described them as both “to the left of Labour”. She is married to fellow accountant Hugh O’Leary.
Truss, the former foreign secretary, has said she will treat households as ‘single tax entities’, and has outlined tax cuts of over £30 billion. She told the BBC that “reducing National Insurance and Corporation Tax increases the supply side of the economy.”
She was a Remainer in the Brexit vote and she: “I don’t want my daughters to grow up in a world where they need a visa or permit to work in Europe, or where they are hampered from growing a business because of extortionate call costs and barriers to trade. Every parent wants their children to grow up in a healthy environment with clean water, fresh air and thriving natural wonders. Being part of the EU helps protect these precious resources and spaces.”
