He was a surprise absentee from the leadership race in July, but the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, is now being touted as a replacement for Liz Truss. The 52-year-old, a staunch remainer who is a favourite among many Tory members, ruled himself out of this summer’s contest on personal grounds. “I didn’t want it enough. I think at my stage in life ... to want to be prime minister, you have to really, really want it,” he told the Telegraph last month. “You have to want it above all else, to be ruthless at one level. I can be ruthless in certain things. But I have three teenage children, my wife and I had separated, so no one’s going to come and live with me in Chequers.”
But when asked at the Conservative party conference this month if he would consider running for leader, he said: “I don’t rule it out.” The Farnborough-born father of three, who lives in Lancashire with his family, says he enjoys rugby, skiing and horse racing “when time permits” and lists his interests as the NHS, home affairs and foreign policy. Unlike most cabinet ministers, Wallace did not go to university. He left school at 18 and became a ski instructor in Austria before attending the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He joined the Scots Guards in 1991 and served in Germany, Cyprus, Belize and Northern Ireland. He left in 1998 to pursue a political career and was elected a year later as a member of the Scottish parliament, where he served a single term. He later moved to Lancashire and was elected as the MP for Lancaster and Wyre in 2005. In his first address to the Commons, he said: “Yesterday, while I was waiting all day to be called, it struck me that a maiden speech is a bit like a first bungee jump, leap from an aeroplane or chance to walk a girl home – while one is waiting, one does not know whether one will get one’s chance; while one is waiting for the chance, one is not sure whether one has done the right thing.” Wallace has been the MP for Wyre and Preston North since 2010 and voted remain in the 2016 EU referendum. He was promoted to defence secretary in 2019 and has been praised for his handling of the Ukraine crisis. He was one of the first to make Kyiv’s case with western allies, and pushed the government to support Ukraine.
Wallace was part of Johnson’s inner circle while he was prime minister, depsite being a staunch remainer, but, towards the end of his premiership, started to put some clear water between himself and Johnson. And despite being one of the most popular cabinet ministers, it appears that not everyone knows who he is. Scotland’s Sunday Mail was one of the newspapers to report on the plot to bring him in but, in an embarrassing blunder, the publication published a photo of the financial secretary to the Treasury, Andrew Griffith, on the first edition of its front page instead. Wallace responded to the gaffe by tweeting a picture of Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and saying: “Blimey! here’s another picture of me in my old Army uniform.” Labour MP Jess Phillips tweeted: “Earlier while having a conversation about possibility of Ben Wallace take over, we concluded that no one in the country knew who he was. This front page proves that point as this isn’t Ben Wallace.”