She may be the third female head of government in the UK.

Given favorite, Foreign Minister Liz Truss is a finalist in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, forced to resign in the face of the accumulation of scandals.

She strives to find the delicate balance between renewal and continuity to convince the conservatives.

When his opponent Rishi Sunak is perceived as a traitor by the faithful of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, 47, endeavors to highlight the achievements of the future ex-Prime Minister, between Brexit and an unprecedented majority since the 1980s. And affirms regret his departure, which opens the doors of Downing Street to him.

Face of post-Brexit negotiations

For almost a year, Liz Truss has been at the head of British diplomacy.

Both a consecration and an appointment – ​​the second of a woman in this position – perceived as a way for Boris Johnson to try to keep control over the ambitions of a rising figure among the Conservatives.

In the campaign, his initial opposition to Brexit comes back on repeat.

She says today that she was "wrong" and highlights her record.

As soon as he came to power at the end of July 2019, Boris Johnson entrusted Liz Truss with the Foreign Trade portfolio.

In this position, this karaoke lover with straight blonde hair becomes the face of trade negotiations in post-Brexit London and familiarizes herself with diplomatic circuits.

At the head of the Foreign Office, Liz Truss distinguished herself by her first conciliatory and then intransigent attitude towards the European Union in the delicate negotiations on the post-Brexit provisions concerning the British province of Northern Ireland.

Some victories and setbacks

She has to her credit having obtained the release of the Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, detained for more than six years in Iran on charges of conspiracy which she has always denied.

Alongside Boris Johnson, Liz Truss also embodied the massive support of the United Kingdom for Ukraine, in particular thanks to economic sanctions of an unprecedented scale.

She also had some setbacks.

During a trip to Moscow that was seen as a last-ditch attempt to dissuade Vladimir Putin, Liz Truss was tricked by her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov into claiming that she would “never” recognize Moscow's sovereignty over two Russian cities. close to Ukraine, Rostov and Voronezh, whose membership in Russia is not disputed.

Childhood left

Born on July 26, 1975, married and mother of two daughters, Liz Truss presents herself, with the enthusiasm of converts, as the embodiment of British conservatism par excellence, low taxation and a reduced state.

After ten years in the private sector (as a commercial director in particular), she was first a local councilor in south-east London and then became an MP in 2010, for the constituency of South West Norfolk (east of England). .

In 2012, she joined the government and has since held various portfolios, first Secretary of State for Education, then Minister of the Environment from 2014 to 2016. She also became the first woman Minister of Justice, then Secretary in head of the treasury.

Her presence even among the conservatives is far from self-evident: Liz Truss grew up in a very left-wing environment.

At the prestigious University of Oxford, from which she graduated in politics and economics, she chairs the group of Europhile Liberal Democrats.

"Human Grenade"

By her own admission, she stupefies her parents – a university math professor father and a nuclear disarmament activist mother, whom she accompanies as a child to protests with fake cardboard missiles – by ultimately positioning herself frankly to the right.

Since the beginning of the campaign, some people like to resuscitate a nickname that was hers when she was at the Ministry of Education: the “human grenade”.

"A backhanded compliment," she recently told

The Sun

tabloid , "it means I do things."

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