Liz Truss’ lover Mark Field opens up on affair with former prime minister

Mark Field, the former MP for Cities of London and Westminster, has come clean about his notorious romantic entanglement with Liz Truss, who briefly served as the UK’s Prime Minister. He confessed that the affair led to the demise of his marriage.

Back in the early 2000s, Mark, now aged 60, encountered the “first serious signs of cracks” in his marital life around the time Elizabeth Truss came into the picture. Married since 1994 to Michele, a director at two stockbroking firms, Mark mentioned there were no discussions of children nor any significant spats between them, a situation that seemed “reassuring” but should have set off “perhaps alarm bells ought to have been ringing”, according to him.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mark recalled connecting with Liz, now 49 years old and married to Hugh O’Leary since 2000, during the Conservative Party Conference held in October 2002. Their paths crossed within the “romantic dimmed lights” of the Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth.

Not an MP then, Liz would later secure her seat for South West Norfolk from 2010 to May 2024. Their fateful evening ended with Mark conveying his well-wishes and offering assistance with the words: “Please get in touch if I can be of any help”.

The following Monday, he discovered an email from Liz in his inbox seeking advice on interview selection techniques, leading to a meeting later that week, reports .

Over the course of the next year, they began to meet for lunch or coffee more frequently. He described Liz as “Even then, Liz came across as an impulsive bundle of energy, obsessed by the workings and machinations of politics.”

When Mark was appointed to the shadow cabinet’s front bench, he was tasked with drafting the party’s initial international trade policy. He recalled how he and Liz “worked enthusiastically together on this over several weeks”.

He found it amusing that when she became Trade Secretary, she continued to use the phrase ‘free and fair trade’ that they had coined together years earlier. They would exchange book recommendations and soon, he said, “barely a day would pass” without them speaking over the phone.

Mark described her as “She was, I found, always exhilarating to be around. She could turn on a sixpence from being a wide-eyed wannabe, hanging on my every word, to an opinionated, stubborn and somewhat belligerent know-it-all.

“Her manic energy was intoxicating, disconcerting and exhausting. Not to mention at times utterly infuriating. A friend who knew us both well remarked on the evident chemistry between us at this time how we’d both become so much more animated when talking of each other.”

In a candid revelation, Mark disclosed how his friendship with Liz blossomed into an affair at the end of 2003. He said: “But it was only at the end of 2003 that the intensity of my friendship with Liz turned into something else. Inevitably, there is something very unreal in any affair, especially when both parties are married and living with their spouses Liz had married Hugh O’Leary, an accountant, just three years before.”

He reflected on the nature of their secret relationship: “The mundanities of clearing the dinner table, putting out the rubbish or even settling down together to watch television play no part in your shared existence; instead, there is the anticipation and elation of a few precious hours spent in each other’s exclusive company and the thrill that comes with never quite being sure if this is the last time.”

Mark also admitted to the emotional complexities involved: “Nevertheless, in my heart, I was painfully aware that our marriages were in very different places. Indeed, every three or four months, beset by what I took to be a mixture of guilt and indecision, Liz would try to cool things down.”

He explained his strategy for dealing with the ups and downs of their liaison: Mark said that he “quickly worked out” that the best response to this was to step back and make no attempt to contact her, which he said would leave her coming back after a week or so apologetically and they would “very soon be carrying on as before”.

The affair seemed destined to end as Mark recounted Liz’s political ambitions: In early 2005 it would seem that their affair would not be for much longer. Mark detailed her three-month general election campaign in the marginal Yorkshire constituency of Calder Valley, which she would go on to lose by under 1,400 votes.

He recounted that during that period, he made a few trips to see her perform. After her defeat, she returned to London and things resumed as they were.

Despite what he described as “an intense couple of months” where they spent considerable time together, parliamentary recess and family holidays took precedence, with him joining two overseas delegations. This gap meant they couldn’t meet for nearly two months.

He revealed: “I am not sure I have ever really subscribed to the theory that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I remember feeling unsettled that summer. Clarity came in September when Liz told me that she was staying with her husband.

“I knew in an instant that my own marriage was over. Liz’s marriage, however, had, and still has, endured.”

Speaking about her brief tenure as leader of the Conservative Party, Mark commented: “She has many of the qualities that are essential to reaching the highest rank in politics limitless ambition and self-belief, raw intelligence, resilience and an overwhelming sense of personal destiny.

“Her years of dedication as a party activist, association chairwoman, and candidate for council and parliament now served her well. She had a unique grasp on what motivated the ageing party membership, so it was no shock to me when she triumphantly outperformed .

“In reality, her entire decade-long ministerial career had been an object lesson in relentlessly talking a good game about individual freedom, smaller government, tax-cutting, economic growth and promoting market solutions but actually delivering next to nothing.

“Yet for a decade she held a succession of Cabinet roles in which she was tipped for the sack at virtually every reshuffle. Having made it to 10 Downing Street against the odds, she was determined to do it her way. In her mind, she had been pragmatic for long enough, and now no one was going to stop her.

“Unfortunately, there was startlingly little to suggest that Liz had either the powers of inspirational leadership or the capacity to focus on the implementation of her policies.”

He added: “Her grand plan to cut taxes and slash public expenditure flew in the face of the fact that the UK’s population is fast getting older and more dependent on the state. Meanwhile, her mantra of ‘growth, growth, growth’ was never backed up by the remotest evidence of how she would implement it.”