A conservative husband and two teens: Liz Truss settles down with her family in Downing Street

Like her ancestors, Liz Truss moves to Downing Street with her family, husband and two teenage daughters, who will have to get used to this new life at the front of the stage.

Hugh O’Leary, Liz Truss’s husband of 22 years, was by her side on Monday as the Conservative Party scored their victory, and then again on Tuesday, escorting his wife to her entrance into Downing Street.

The 48-year-old chartered accountant, a graduate of the London School of Economics, is a reputable man who can “walk down the street unrecognized, even in Downing Street” and was recently mocked by The Mirror daily.

And so he walked away from his wife’s campaign this summer, despite his longstanding political involvement with the Conservatives – he and Liz Truss met in 1997 at the party’s annual conference. “He doesn’t want to have a big public role,” Ms Truss told The Telegraph at the start of the campaign.

Observers often compare him to former prime minister Theresa May’s husband, who, unlike Carrie Johnson, the outgoing prime minister’s wife, chose to stay out of the public eye.

According to the Guardian, he prefers to “take care of domestic activities during the week, while his wife is busy in Westminster”.

However, Liz Truss was quoted as saying by The Mirror, “When I need a belated discussion about supply policy reform or econometrics, I always have someone on hand.”

Hugh O’Leary, chief financial officer of a property firm, could continue to work from the couple’s home in southeast London or find an office near Westminster, the Guardian understands, citing a friend of his.

Like his wife, whose extramarital affair with a married Conservative MP in 2006 nearly cost him his election as MP three years later, he had tendencies to enter politics in the early 2000s but without winning the election.

The couple have two daughters, 16-year-old Frances and 13-year-old Liberty, according to birthday cake photos posted by their mother on Instagram, and they are also moving to Downing Street. After the birth of Boris Johnson’s children when he was prime minister, or David Cameron’s young children, they are the first teenage girls to live there since the children of former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair 25 years ago.

– “Very excited” –

Like the daughters of former US President Barack Obama and Malia and Sasha, in the US, they are on the cusp of becoming among the most scrutinized teens by the British media.

According to the Guardian, they are “extremely excited” to move into No. 10 or No. 11, a more spacious apartment many prime ministers prefer for their condos, whose back door opens directly onto St James’ Park.

“They have already planned to sleep with their friends in Downing Street and at Checkers (the prime minister’s country residence) with his huge garden and heated swimming pool,” the newspaper said.

Frances participated in her mother’s campaign on the digital team. “Francis may be a little more centrist and Liberty a little more conservative, but they both encourage me a lot,” Liz Truss told The Times during the campaign, adding that she talks to them “politics all the time.”

“I am very open with my daughters. I think that is the only way to act because it is a life under a lot of pressure,” added the current Prime Minister, who protects her very private life.

There are only a few pictures of her daughters, save for a few that their mother posted on Instagram, including a photo in 2019 showing them from behind walking in a park.

It is not certain that such an appreciation is still possible now that the family has moved to Downing Street.

In the past, Tony Blair’s son, Ewan Blair, has made headlines as he filmed a drunken dead 16-year-old in central London, much to the embarrassment of his father, the prime minister.