Liz Truss accused of ‘taking sabbatical’ as Foreign Secretary while focusing on Tory leadership bid

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has been accused of neglecting her duties as the UK’s leading diplomat while she focuses on her Tory leadership bid.

Analysis of Foreign Office public and media announcements suggest Ms Truss has only met or spoken to two of her international counterparts since the beginning of the leadership election campaign.

She is also being accused of barely being in her Whitehall Office, but Ms Truss’s campaign team insists she is continuing her Foreign Office duties.

However, the length of the leadership campaign and regular hustings in different areas of the country have led the Liberal Democrats to accuse her of “taking a sabbatical”.

The analysis of public statements show that she has held only one phone call with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba since 7 July – the day she left the G20 Foreign Ministers Summit in Indonesia early to launch her leadership campaign following Boris Johnson’s resignation.

It also shows that her last conversation with any foreign minister took place with her opposite number in Paris on Saturday 23 July following the long delays for both tourists and freight traffic at the French border.

Five days later Ms Truss attended the first of a dozen leadership hustings in her effort to beat former Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the competition to win the keys to No 10.

The Liberal Democrat’s analysis of Ms Truss’ engagements has been verified by FCDO sources and i’s own investigations into Ms Truss’s meetings.

Since the first hustings event in Leeds on 28 July, it is also understood Ms Truss has barely been at her Whitehall desk in the Foreign Office.

One senior FCDO source said: “I’ve been in the office throughout the leadership campaign, and I’ve never known her to be at her desk.”

While Ms Truss will be getting regular security updates, it is also understood that she did not attend a vital meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to London Zheng Zeguang following China’s show of force around Taiwan earlier this month.

On Wednesday 10 August Ms Truss did say that she had “instructed officials to summon the Chinese Ambassador” to the FCDO to explain China’s escalation of its military activity around Taiwan. However, it is understood that this meeting was hosted by her officials and that she was not present.

Last week, Ms Truss did announce that she had triggered dispute proceedings with the European Union after accusing it of breaching the Brexit treaty by freezing it out of scientific research programmes following the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) official agenda on how the UK was due to commemorate Ukraine’s independence from Moscow in 1991 included events across the country, but it made no mention of any engagements for the Foreign Secretary to mark the day.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, who Ms Truss is heavily tipped to succeed as Prime Minister when the result of the Conservative leadership ballot is announced on Monday 5 September, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Common’s Foreign Affairs Committee, also attended events in Kyiv on Wednesday.

Before the leadership campaign began there were regular announcements of Ms Truss’s meetings with international dignitaries and attendance at international conferences on social media.

Layla Moran, the Lib Dem spokeswoman for foreign affairs, said: “Our analysis of all Liz Truss’s official engagements since she hit the campaign trail shows she has held just one phone call with her Ukrainian counterpart, and has not met any other Foreign Ministers or attended any FCDO meetings about China’s aggression towards Taiwan.

“She has made a mockery of one of the great offices of state in her climb to the top. If she cannot be bothered to be the UK’s Foreign Secretary, how can we rely on her to be the Prime Minister of our country?”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomes outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv six months to the day since Russia invaded the country (Photo: Andrew Kravchenko/AP)

During his unsuccessful 2019 leadership election campaign against Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt continued to undertake his role as Britain’s chief diplomat on the campaign trail.

His full schedule of engagements included calling the Foreign Minister of Iran, his counterparts in France and Germany, as well as the Chief Minister of Gibraltar. He also went to Brussels to discuss the Iran nuclear deal, and hosted meetings in London with the President of Iraq.

Ms Moran added: “Whilst war is raging on our continent for the first time in decades, as well as tensions rising between the West and China over Taiwan, Liz Truss has decided to take a self-imposed sabbatical from her role as Britain’s most senior diplomat.”

A spokesman for the FCDO said: “The Foreign Secretary continues to lead the department and her engagements will be communicated in the usual way.”

It is understood that “the usual way” means that all the Foreign Secretary’s meetings, phone calls with international figures and overseas travel are announced via the Government’s news service and on official social media channels.

These official channels confirm that the only calls Ms Truss has made since Thursday 7 July were to the Ukrainian and French Foreign Ministers. No overseas travel has been undertaken since she returned from Indonesia on Thursday 7 July.

Despite several requests, Ms Truss’s campaign team refused to comment on the number of meetings she has held or how many days she had spent in her Whitehall office since launching her leadership campaign.

A campaign source said: “Liz continues to carry out her day-to-day duties as Foreign Secretary.”