Liz Truss promoted to Foreign Secretary replacing Dominic Raab in Cabinet reshuffle

The International Trade Secretary has been given one of the most powerful jobs in the government after Dominic Raab was demoted to Justice Secretary

Liz Truss has been handed one of the most powerful jobs in the UK government in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet reshuffle.

The right-winger was named Foreign Secretary today – replacing ousted Dominic Raab who was demoted to Justice.

She remains minister for women and equalities, where she stirred controversy by dropping Theresa May’s pledges to make it easier for trans people to change their legal gender.

It marks the culmination of a steady climb to the ‘big four’ jobs of government for the free marketeer Tory and is her fifth Cabinet job since 2014.

And she now sits alongside Priti Patel who remains at the Home Office, leaving two of the great offices of state now held by women.

Ms Truss, 46, is well-liked among Tory MPs – with some even suggesting her as a future Prime Minister.

But outside of the party she’s best known for a series of gaffe-ridden conference speeches from early in her ministerial career.

Memes and gifs of her expressing delight at the UK opening “new pork markets” and saying it was a “disgrace” that the UK imports two thirds of its cheese have endured on political Twitter.

That didn’t stop her being promoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Theresa May, and then by Boris Johnson to the crucial post-Brexit role of International Trade Secretary, where she has been in charge of rebuilding the UK’s trade deals with the rest of the world.

Ms Truss is said to echo Margaret Thatcher’s politics of the ’80s. And like the Iron Lady she didn’t attend private school and she grew up in the North of England.

Amnesty International UK expressed disappointment with Ms Truss’ new role.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s CEO said: “Liz Truss obviously comes into the job with an enormous in-tray, from the deepening crisis in Afghanistan to the challenges presented by relations with China and Russia.

“One of the things we’d like to see most urgently from the new Foreign Secretary is a clearly articulated strategy for securing the release of British nationals arbitrarily detained in Iran.

“The plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and other UK nationals held in Iran has extended across the last four foreign secretaries – it’s long past time that the UK finally brought this deeply distressing episode to an end.”