Minister from six generations of farmers vs tough-minded free marketeer
THE differences between Liz Truss and George Eustice are not confined to disagreements over international trade and the limits to the free market.
While Ms Truss went to a Leeds comprehensive school and joined her parents on CND marches as a child, privately educated Mr Eustice grew up on his parents’ fruit farm and spent nine years running the business before entering politics.
As the sixth generation of his family to farm the West Country fields, the affable 48-year-old Minister boasts a rare personal understanding of the difficulties of earning a living from the land.
Ms Truss has a more hard-headed reputation than her fellow Cabinet member. As one colleague says: ‘Even when she flirts – which is often – there is a certain flintiness there.’ The International Trade Secretary has been on a political journey since her Left-wing childhood as the ‘bossy’ sister of three younger brothers, born to a maths professor and a former nurse.
It was while reading philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford that Ms Truss ‘transitioned’ from the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives, explaining later: ‘I met Tories and I realised that they didn’t have two heads and were actually good people.’
Ms Truss married accountant Hugh O’Leary after they met at the 1997 Tory Party conference and she invited him to go ice skating.
The couple, who have two children, endured a rocky patch in 2009 as she was seeking selection for her South West Norfolk seat. Several members of her constituency association claimed she had withheld information about an affair she had had with Tory MP Mark Field five years earlier, which led to the end of Mr Field’s marriage.
After a motion by the so-called local ‘turnip Taliban’ to stop her selection was defeated, she rose quickly through the ranks of David
Cameron’s party – despite what she describes as frequent, patronising ‘mansplaining’ by male colleagues – to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the first female Lord Chancellor.
The 44-year-old abandoned a planned tilt at the leadership after Theresa May’s defenestration, and was rewarded by Boris Johnson with her current responsibility for striking post-Brexit trade deals.
She also holds the post of Equalities
Minister, a brief which includes responsibility for the incendiary issue of transgender rights: Ms Truss has angered activists by making clear her opposition to liberalising the rules to allow biological males who identify as women to use female facilities such as lavatories.
As the founder of the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs, she is strongly aligned with the free-marketeer wing of the party, which her critics say has blinded
If Americans want privileged access to UK market they must abide by British laws GEORGE EUSTICE ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY
her to the damage that a US trade deal could wreak on the British farming industry.
Mr Eustice started his post-farming political career 20 years ago as the campaign director for the anti-euro ‘No’ campaign, before going on to become head of press for Michael Howard and David Cameron. He squeaked into his Camborne and Redruth seat in Cornwall in 2010 with a majority of just 66 votes, and was made an Environment Minister in 2013.
His long stint in the department was broken only by his resignation in February last year in protest at Theresa May’s promise to allow MPs a vote on delaying Brexit.
The politician, who actively campaigned to leave the EU, was restored by Mr Johnson to the department in February this year as the Secretary of State, replacing Theresa Villiers.
Mr Eustice, who has a daughter with wife Katy, a former journalist, splits his time between homes in West London and Cornwall, where he once represented the county’s cross-country team.
During his brief spell on the backbenches, 48-year-old Mr Eustice made clear in an article for the Guardian that he had clear ‘red lines’ for a US trade deal, criticising Woody Johnson, the US ambassador to Britain, for urging the UK to drop its opposition to American farming practices such as the use of hormones in beef and chlorine washes for chicken.
Describing US agriculture as ‘quite backward in many respects’, the Minister said: ‘It retains a position of resisting more information on labels to limit consumer knowledge and engagement. Its livestock sectors often suffer from poor husbandry, which leads to more prevalence of disease and a greater reliance on antibiotics.’
And Mr Eustice warned: ‘If Americans want to be granted privileged access to the UK market, they will have to learn to abide by British law and British standards, or kiss goodbye to any trade deal and join the back of the queue.’