Isabel Hardman profiles: Elizabeth Truss MP

“I'm a bit scared of Liz Truss, actually,” one burly male Tory MP admitted to me recently. Imagine how the education minister's civil servants must feel: they've nicknamed her the 'human hand grenade' for her propensity for blowing obstacles out of her way. She's certainly a tough cookie - and her resilience has been tested throughout her career in politics, with a series of bruising encounters with members of her own party and her Coalition partners.

She's also impressively tribal for a politician – and has occupied almost every tribe going, at one stage in her life or another. The daughter of two public sector workers in Leeds, Truss grew up a lefty, going on CND marches as a child. She won a place to study PPE at Oxford and became president of the university Lib Dems. Then she realised that her values were really Conservative: she favours individualism and self-reliance, and certainly exemplifies these herself, possessing a confident, independent air. Talking to her these days, it is impossible to imagine Truss as a Lib Dem – she likes to describe herself as 'a very former' Lib Dem...

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