Mary Elizabeth Truss is a British politician who has held the positions of Minister for Women and Equalities since 2019 and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs since 2021. She has served as South West Norfolk’s member of parliament since 2010 and is a Conservative. She was president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats and a student at Merton College in Oxford.
She earned her degree and joined the Conservative Party in 1996. In the general election of 2010, she won the seat for South West Norfolk. She advocated for change as a backbencher in a number of policy areas, including childcare, mathematics instruction, and the economy. She established the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and authored a number of papers and books, including Britannia Unchained and After the Coalition (2011). (2012).
She was chosen to serve as the Treasury’s chief secretary after the 2017 presidential election. She endorsed Johnson’s ambition to lead the Conservatives when May announced her resignation in 2019. She was given the positions of President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for International Trade by him.
In September 2019, she added the position of Minister for Women and Equalities to her resume. In the 2021 cabinet reshuffle, she transferred from the Department of International Trade to become Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs. In December 2021, she was named the government’s principal negotiator with the EU and UK chair of the EU-UK Partnership Council.Truss is one of the two contenders still in the running for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2022, together with Rishi Sunak.
