A former Conservative MP has detailed his love affair with the UK’s shortest-lived prime minister Liz Truss – claiming it led to the breakdown of his marriage.
Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster from 2001 to 2019, revealed the “first serious signs of cracks” in his marriage started “just as Elizabeth Truss entered his life”.
In his new ebook serialised within the Mail on SundayMr Field mentioned he met the 49-day prime minister on the Conservative Party Conference in October 2002 within the “romantic dimmed lights” of the Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth. She was married to Hugh O’Leary on the time.
He claims the pair had a short dialog, he wished her luck in her seek for a parliamentary seat and casually mentioned, “Please get in touch if I can be of any help.”
Ms Truss took him up on the provide virtually instantly, he wrote, requesting recommendation on candidate choice.
As they started assembly usually, Mr Field mentioned she was “an impulsive bundle of energy, obsessed by the workings and machinations of politics.” He recalled that “even then, Liz came across” as intensely centered on success, displaying “the parroting of slogans, the blind partisanship and the need to present it all with a veneer of absolute confidence.”
As they labored collectively, they spent increasingly more time in one another’s firm, he wrote. “Before long, barely a day would pass without us at least speaking over the phone.”
He mentioned he discovered her “intoxicating, disconcerting and exhausting. Not to mention at times utterly infuriating.”
Their “intensity of friendship” had grow to be an affair in late 2003, he mentioned.
“There is something very unreal in any affair, especially when both parties are married and living with their spouses,” Mr Field wrote.
He mentioned each few months, Ms Truss would attempt to “cool things down” however would at all times “apologetically get back in touch” quickly after.
Ms Truss was chosen because the Conservative candidate for Calder Valley in early 2005, and Mr Field noticed her marketing campaign intently, admiring her “utterly obsessive approach to politics.”
When their affair ultimately led to 2006, Field instantly recognised that “my own marriage was over”. Ms Truss, nonetheless, remained together with her husband. Their relationship turned public information that 12 months when she stood as a candidate for the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election.
Reflecting on her rise to prime minister, he mentioned Ms Trus had “limitless ambition and self-belief, raw intelligence, resilience and an overwhelming sense of personal destiny.”
However, he argued that “her entire decade-long ministerial career had been an object lesson in relentlessly talking a good game… but actually delivering next to nothing”.
“Having made it to 10 Downing Street against the odds, she was determined to do it her way,” he mentioned.
He believed that her downfall stemmed from “startlingly little to suggest that Liz had either the powers of inspirational leadership or the capacity to focus on the implementation of her policies”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-affair-mark-field-b2716016.html