© Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Truss has predictably become new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as decided by members of the ruling Conservative (Tory) Party during a mail vote. For the past six weeks, the rank-and-file party members have been electing their leader who automatically assumes office as the country's PM. These features of Great Britain's political system embody the essence of "democracy", when less than two hundred thousand Tory members elect the new cabinet leader "on behalf" of the 67-million-strong population.

The voting ended on September 2, with three more days needed to count the votes before announcing the winner’s name on September 5. 81,326 Tory Party members voted for Liz Truss, against the 60,399 votes scored by her opponent, ex-finance minister Rishi Sunak, 42. The rest did not cast their votes. Thus, Truss will lead the way in Britain until the next general parliamentary elections to be held by January 24, 2025 unless anything extraordinary happens, like it was with Boris Johnson.

Just a reminder: Johnson, who replaced Theresa May as Prime Minister in July 2019, held the post for three years exactly. Following a series of scandals, he quit on July 7, making the Tories choose their new leader and, subsequently, Prime Minister. After five rounds of preliminary voting in the House of Commons, two candidates made it to the final one – Truss and Sunak. Now it was up to ordinary party members to make their choice. The two candidacies left testify to personnel vacuum both in the Conservative Party and the entire political establishment of Great Britain.

Experts were sure about the Indian native’s defeat, as latent racist sentiments are still strong on the British Isles, which left Sunak with bare chance of winning the race against Truss. Everything happened just as they said it would, although in terms of economic and financial expertise, Rishi Sunak clearly outweighed Liz Truss, which would be crucial amid Britain’s current recession, if not outright crisis.

However, let's take a closer look at the new Prime Minister herself. Liz Truss, 47, was born in Oxford, grew up in Leeds and Scotland. Her parents, Professor John Kenneth and nurse Priscilla Truss, engaged in demonstrations against Margaret Thatcher and had sway over their daughter's political beliefs. In her younger days, Liz addressed CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) rallies, where they chanted "Down with Maggie!". Incredible as it may seem, the "iron lady" later became her idol to carbon-copy her. The only mischief of it is that Liz Truss is light years away for Mrs. Thatcher, by any measure.

Truss graduated from Oxford University’s Merton College, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics. Or the like… As a student she became actively engaged in social and political activities and headed a Liberal Democratic Party branch. Perhaps this is what ultimately affected the quality of Liz's education – hence her numerous ambiguous statements that become memes, particularly in Russia’s segment of the Internet. Thus, everyone remembers her words about invasions of Ukraine "from Mongols to Tatars" and non-recognition of Russia's sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions at a Moscow meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov days before Vladimir Putin’s special military operation.

In 1996, Liz’s life took another twist: she left the LDP and joined the Tories. This made the family members quarrel a lot, and her father even refused to engage in his daughter's campaign during the parliamentary elections because of her commitment to conservative ideas. Year by year, Truss moved up the Tory career ladder and held various ministerial posts in the governments led by David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Finally, September 15, 2021 saw her become head of the Foreign Office. And now she reached the peak of her political career and took the lead in the United Kingdom.

Liz Truss is rated among English neoliberals seeking to bring free enterprise back into politics. She maintains an aggressive attitude on international issues advocating sweeping changes and having vigorously campaigned for leaving the European Union. She is always at the forefront of the fight against Russia and comprehensive support for Ukraine. In general, Liz Truss comes off as the impression a political hardass tank forcing its way regardless of losses.

People who used to work with her say she is overly-ambitious, although her endeavors avowedly outnumber her abilities by a mile. And energy surplus in the wrong hands bodes no good, which seems fully applicable to Liz Truss. She “is a workaholic policy geek whose government would be driven by her manic energy”, as a Guardian journalist put it. When hard comes to hard, she may cause a lot more harm as compared to her predecessor Boris Johnson. By the way, only 12% of Britons believe Truss will prove a good prime minister, with another 52% sure that the country is on the verge of a nightmare. A survey to this effect was conducted by YouGov, Bloomberg reports.

Alas, there is every reason to fear that'll be right for London's relations with Moscow that are already at their all-time low. The "hawkish" Liz Truss is quite obviously up to no good for Russia. An ardent Russophobe, she has often spoken negatively about President Vladimir Putin and urged launching a "crusade" against Russia. Truss is particularly tough on our country’s special military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has long noticed the Russophobic nature of Ms. Truss's statements. Back in July, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said her the pre-election willingness to "ensure Russia's defeat" in Ukraine speaks volumes.

Summing up all the above, it is fair to say that Liz Truss’s entire biography resembles a typical career path of an "eternal activist" not even distinguished by intelligence (the British nicknamed her a "muttering fool"), wisdom or expertise but making use of her irrepressible enthusiasm alone. Given the six ministerial posts she held, this is presumably an illustration to the aphorism "if you can’t to fire an idiot, move him elsewhere." In this sense, people of the type are historically "tenacious" under any system, whether it be political, economic, bureaucratic and so on ad nauseam. Liz Truss seems to fit this category perfectly well…