Liz Truss’s career within the Conservative Party can be characterised by a central contradiction.
Despite being something of an outsider, often considered a bit odd by many of her colleagues, she had, until now, diligently backed the consensus within the party.
Few are the prominent ministers who have managed to serve under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Whether that is down to sly operating, genuine ability, sheer luck or a mixture of all three is hard to say.
Even before entering Parliament in 2010, Ms Truss had been singled out as a potential high-flier.
Selected as the candidate for her seat of South West Norfolk as part of David Cameron’s 'A-list' - a fast track for candidates he wanted to see in parliament - the future prime minister then had to intervene to save Ms Truss from angry locals.
Local members had been angered in part by the idea that Ms Truss had been foisted on them, but mostly because it had been revealed that Ms Truss had been having an affair with the Tory MP for the Cities of Westminster and London and her official mentor, Mark Field.
Mr Cameron was said to have dismissed angry members as the "turnip Taliban" and in the end, the rebellion was not enough to deselect Miss Truss. Her marriage survived the affair, but Mr Field’s did not.
Ms Truss, a former Liberal Democrat activist, was exactly the kind of modernisation Mr Cameron was trying to foster in the party. She was young, a woman, and came from a relatively ordinary middle-class background in Leeds, with an academic for a father and a nurse for a mother.
She also attended a state school, Roundhay College, while a teenager. While she did tread the well-worn path of PPE at Oxford, she didn’t head straight for a Tory party job, instead working as a management accountant for the oil company Shell and elsewhere.
It was only in 2008, having failed in two election attempts, that Ms Truss joined the think tank Reform.
Climbing the executive ladder
Once in Parliament, Ms Truss steadily climbed her way up the executive ladder as a protege of George Osborne. By 2012 she had a junior ministerial role, not long after the publication of Britannia Unchained, a libertarian manifesto she co-authored with Dominic Raab, Kwasi Kwarteng and Chris Skidmore.
Despite those latent radical tendencies, Ms Truss was an effective toer of the party line and it would only take another two years for her to jump straight to the role of Secretary of State, being made Environment Secretary in 2014.
It was an unremarkable stint, but it was in that role that she delivered the moment that for years would be used to mock her: an enthusiastic yet stilted conference speech in which she bounced around between excitement about new pork markets and bizarre outrage at cheese imports.
It was while at Defra that Ms Truss was convinced by Mr Obsorne that Remain would easily win the Brexit referendum and that the obvious career move would be to back the winning side. When it failed, she was a quick convert to the new consensus, discovering within herself that she was, in fact, a true Brexiteer.
Ms Truss escaped the vengefulness that Mrs May meted out against her former mentor Mr Osborne, who quickly left Parliament. Instead, she was promoted to Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. From there, things would not go well. Ms Truss fell out quickly with the legal profession who questioned her competence.
'Enemies of the people'
Even Cabinet colleagues were unimpressed, and she came under heavy fire for failing to defend judges who were branded "enemies of the people" by the Daily Mail.
With Mrs May appearing dominant at the start of 2017 and having called a snap election with the expectation of a huge majority, the writing appeared to be on the wall for Ms Truss. The assumption was that she would be one of the first ministers to be fired in the post-election reshuffle.
Instead, the election went disastrously wrong for Mrs May and she endured an agonising reshuffle in which a number of ministers refused to move.
Ms Truss was demoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, but it ended up being a lucky turn. The role appeared to much better suit her abilities and she quietly rebuilt her reputation by keeping a hawkish eye on departmental spending and exuding steady competence.
That performance, combined with her newfound, undying enthusiasm for Brexit saw her rewarded with the role of Trade Secretary once Mrs May had been ousted and replaced by Mr Johnson.
It was the perfect role for Ms Truss at the perfect time. She was able to travel the world signing dozens of trade deals, most of which were simple and easy roll-overs of existing EU agreements, securing a stream of good news and photo opportunities.
Combined with her authentic and savvy social media use, including her insistence on running her own Instagram account, it allowed her to build up a reputation among the Tory grassroots and to cement her Brexit bona fides.
When the role at the newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office opened up (a merger that Ms Truss had long backed), she seemed an obvious choice for Mr Johnson.
Once in post, she again proved that her Brexiteer conversion was total, taking the hardest of lines in her scrap with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol.
It’s only in the leadership election, however, that the world has finally been able to see Ms Truss liberated from the party consensus. Despite staying loyal to Mr Johnson during his ousting, when the moment to campaign arrived she was quick to jettison any pretence of continuity.
While Rishi Sunak made himself the steady-as-she-goes candidate, promising no immediate tax cuts or radical change, Ms Truss made herself the favourite by embracing the kind of change that technocrats and Civil Service orthodoxy abhors.
It takes guile, luck and a willingness to bite one's tongue and back the party leaders to survive in Westminster. Now, though, we have finally seen the real Liz Truss unchained.
