Liz Truss is known for her love of sums – but does she add up as first choice for No 10?

An Oxford degree in PPE as well as two maths A-levels must put Ms Truss in the top 1 per cent of the population academically. Yet questions over her ability remain

​​Liz Truss is said to have a characteristically no-nonsense way of weeding out civil servants who cannot do their sums. Her technique was described in a national newspaper report on her plan, as prime minister in waiting, to make No 10 the government’s “economic nerve centre”, staffed by the best “economic brains” in Britain.

Only the most brilliant number crunchers would do as Truss seized back power from the Treasury, it said. The report went on: “She is fond of giving civil servants mental arithmetic as interview questions, being unwilling to appoint those who cannot promptly say, for example, what a seventh minus an eighth is.”

It reminded me of an uncannily similar, albeit much easier, mental arithmetic quiz involving Truss not long after she was made children’s minister by David Cameron in 2013. She got the job after campaigning for a return to the “three Rs” in schools.

I was political editor of a national newspaper at the time, and arranged to meet up with Truss at the Conservative Party conference to introduce her to my boss. After she explained how she wanted schools to go back to teaching traditional skills such as times tables, I asked her: “What is seven times eight?”

She replied: “54.” She joined in the laughter at the schoolgirl howler – quite a big one for someone with A-levels in maths and pure maths. Not to mention a father who is emeritus professor of maths at Leeds University. I have teased her about it since.

Truss did better when put on the spot by Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain in 2018, during another of her “bring back sums” campaigns. “What is nine times eight?” he asked. This time she got it right – “Er, 72” – though it took her a full five seconds and a nervous pause to do so, prompting Morgan to quip: “You got there – eventually.”

She wasn’t going to risk being caught out again, and told him to stop the maths test. An Oxford degree in PPE as well as two maths A-levels must put Truss in the top 1 per cent of the population academically. Yet questions over her ability remain.

Michael Gove more than hinted at it when he announced he is backing Sunak, calling Truss’s tax cuts “a holiday from reality”. Conservative MP turned pundit Matthew Parris, who is also backing Sunak, is more blunt, calling her “a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering on a pinhead of a political brain”.

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Doubts are said to have surfaced in the US, too. On Friday, in an article about how Truss is viewed in Washington, the political news website Politico reported that “one of the topics of discussion in DC social circles is her intellectual capacity”. One former British diplomat described Truss’s early ministerial forays to Washington as “a bit awkward in both group and one-to-one settings”.

Closer to home, Katy Balls of The Spectator has said that Truss’s reputation among Conservative MPs, particularly the 2010 intake, “ranges from underwhelming to bad”. Many Conservative grandees consider her a “lightweight”, added Balls.

Truss claims that much of the criticism of her is sexism, and that it has served to drive her to succeed. Certainly, her Tory idol Margaret Thatcher endured similar sneers from an earlier generation of grandees in her early days – though it is a safe bet that she would have known seven eights are 56.

Sunak thought he would prove too clever for Truss in the leadership contest. But he was too clever by half: she stood up to him impressively, and he was the one left looking stupid. For now.