Quiet laneways, rows of villas in blonde Yorkshire stone, a large school hidden in the bush, a few neat pubs… To the north of Leeds, the district of Roundhay contrasts nicely with the rest of this north-east England metropolis, a former textile capital that has become an active shopping and university center, but without charm.

It is in this bourgeois enclave that the Foreign Secretary, Mary Elizabeth Truss, 47, the new British Prime Minister, elected by the leading members of the Conservative Party on Monday September 5 – will be appointed in Downing Street by the Queen Elizabeth II, Tuesday, spent his adolescence. A studious student, the third woman – and the third Conservative – in this role, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, she attended Roundhay School, a renowned public institution, before landing a place at Oxford University, PPE option. (politics, philosophy, economics), the real way to haunt the alleys of power.

In July, at the beginning of the Conservative Party primaries caused by the fall of Boris Johnson, pushed out by his own deputies, after the “partygate”, Liz Truss said that she had been educated “in the heart of the red wall” (northern England, known for its impoverished areas) and had met students there ” that [son] dropped out of school. These comments did not go down well, with local media reporting outraged reactions from local residents who claimed their neighborhood was not deprived at all.

full fledged campaign

Passing through Leeds on July 28 to take part in the first public debate pitting her against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss recalled these disputed memories. A path for this political leader, square blond and ivory skin, follower of power dresses and very high heels, to sharpen an “anti-system” provincial image; a truly “Yorkshire Girl”, as she likes to point out, what she would take from this region “great determination and the habit of telling the truth.” ‘This is what we need in Downing Street in these times of crisis, someone who is bold, who rejects the status quo’he added, in Leeds.

Liz Truss, however, settled years ago in Greenwich, a privileged area of ​​southeast London. She comes from a middle-class family: her father, John, a university professor of mathematics, and her mother, Priscilla, a left-wing activist nurse, met on the sidelines of the prestigious Cambridge University. But her small deviations from her reality did not harm her with members of the Conservative Party, who had to choose between her and Sunak.

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