Liz Terrass is a conservative British politician who became the second woman in the history of the United Kingdom to hold the position of Foreign Minister in 2021 and the third woman to head the government, and on the fourth of September 2022 the Conservative Party announced her victory in the party leadership, succeeding Boris Johnson, which makes her take over the prime minister.


After the spread of a video clip showing a terrace on top of a tank, British media - especially the right-wing ones - sought to describe the terrace as the "Iron Lady", a title that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had long enjoyed.

Birth and upbringing

Mary Elizabeth Trace, better known as "Liz Terrace", was born on July 26, 1975, in Oxford, England, to left-wing parents.

Her father was a professor of mathematics at the University of Leeds, and her mother was a nurse, teacher and activist.

Her mother's Terss took part in anti-nuclear rallies led by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organization that vehemently opposed the Thatcher government's decision to allow US nuclear warheads to be stationed at RAF Greenham Common, west London.


Study and scientific training

Terrace moved with her family from Oxford to Paisley, in west central Scotland, at the age of 4, where she attended West Primary School.

After that, Trace attended Merton College at Oxford University, where she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and in 1996 Trace obtained her BA.

marriage

In 1997 Terrace met accountant Hugh O'Leary, at the Conservative Party convention, and they married in 2000, and they have two daughters.

political experience

Trass got involved in politics at an early age, as she was the chairwoman of the (center-left) Liberal Democrats at Oxford University.

In 1994 she gave a speech at the Liberal Democrats convention in which she supported a motion calling for the abolition of the British monarchy, when she was 19.

After graduating from university in 1996, she joined the Conservative Party, and within two years she had gone from anti-monarchical to the most royalist party in the UK.

Terrace ran for Parliament in 2001 and 2005 for the Conservative Party, but was unsuccessful.

In 2006 she was elected to the council of Greenwich, south-east London, and in 2008 she was deputy director of the conservative think tank Islah.

Terrace insisted on running in the 2010 general election, this time winning a seat in Parliament for the Southwest Norfolk constituency.

Terrace enthusiastically supported remaining in the European Union, tweeting on her account, "Support for everyone who will vote to remain with the European Union, because this serves the interests of the British economy," but after voting in the 2016 national referendum, she declared that she was wrong.

Functions and Responsibilities

After graduation, she worked directly in the Shell Petroleum Company, and took the position of commercial director in the company, and then moved to another company to take the position of economic director.

In September 2012, Teras was appointed to the position of Under-Secretary of State for Education and Child Welfare, where she began her ministerial career.

In 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron promoted her to Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Terrace became the first-ever female Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Justice, after being appointed to the position by Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2016, following Cameron's resignation as prime minister.

In 2017, following the general elections, Terass was appointed to the position of First Secretary to the Treasury.

In 2019, after May announced that she would resign as Conservative Party leader, Truss became one of the first ministers to support Boris Johnson's bid to become party leader and prime ministers.

In August 2019, Johnson rewarded Terrace by appointing her Secretary of State for International Trade and Chair of the Board of Trade, and a month later he added the Ministry of Women and Equality to her portfolio.

In September 2021, Johnson selected her for the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Commonwealth Affairs and Development, becoming the second woman ever to hold the position in Britain.

In December 2021, Truss was appointed as the British government's chief negotiator with the European Union, following the resignation of Lord David Frost.

In July 2022, after a series of scandals, Johnson announced his resignation as the leader of the Conservative Party, and then as prime minister, to open the way for Truss to run to succeed him.

The parliamentary system adopted in Britain stipulates that the leader of the largest party represented in Parliament assumes the presidency of the government, and that he can be replaced before the end of the term without calling for general elections.


Then, 10 candidates other than Terrace competed in the vote held in July 2022, and in the fifth ballot for Conservative lawmakers (MPs) from the Conservative Party, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak won 137 out of 357 votes, to 113 for Terrace and 105 for Secretary of Commerce Penny Mordaunt. .

In the final ballot in which the party bases voted and its results were announced on September 5, 2022, Terras entered the confrontation against Sunak and won it after obtaining 81,326 votes, compared to 60,399 votes for Sunak.

Russia and Ukraine war

When visiting Russia in February 2022, a few days before the war in Ukraine began, Terras was wearing a fur bowler hat that observers likened to that worn by Thatcher (1925-2013) on a trip to a NATO training camp in 1986.

At the end of February 2022, the G7 watchdog called for a limit on the import of oil and natural gas from Russia, and said the Russo-Ukrainian war could "last years" and could mark the "beginning of the end" for Putin.

In July 2022, Truss blamed Putin for the global energy and food crisis.

literature

Trace co-authored a book, Unchained Britain, which called for the abolition of the state's regulatory role to bolster the UK's standing in the world.