Liz Truss is the Secretary of State at Defra and the MP for Southwest Norfolk. Her Twitter handle is @trussliz. She has 21,500 Twitter followers (including me) and follows 940 Twitter accounts (not including me).
Ms Truss’s Twitter account gives little evidence that she is interested in the environment at all. She follows no national wildlife or environmental organisations as far as I can see – except for Natural England (and it looks as though she has only just discovered them!) and the Environment Agency (and they work for her!). She does follow quite a few of her Defra staff (eg her chief vet (@ChiefVetUK) and chief scientist (@DefraChiefScien)) and agencies such as the Food Standards Agency (@foodgov) and the Rural Payments (on a good day) Agency (@Ruralpay).
She does follow Andy Clements (@_AndyClements the boss of the BTO but not the BTO (@_BTO) itself, despite it being based in her constituency) and she follows the eastern region of RSPB too (@RSPBintheEast).
On the other hand, Ms Truss does follow the Countryside Alliance account – as is normal, it seems, for Defra ministers so that they can keep in touch with their stakeholders!
If anything there is slightly more evidence that Ms Truss was interested in her old job in Education than her current one in Defra from her Twitter follows.
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Do we know to what extent Minsters manage their own Twitter accounts and to what extent they’re managed for them by “advisers” and spin doctors? Just wondering.
Its a good point but nevertheless indicates the bodies/people that she/they think it is worth keeping abreast of and those whose opinions do not count.
No great surprise there – I’ve always assumed the deal is ‘keep things quiet in Defra, do the cuts and you’ll be the next SoS for education’.
Other then the cuts that so far has been relatively positive in that the terrible things some Conservative MPs would like to do to Defra – and especially NE – may not happen because there would be a fuss. But nature, drat it, may have done the dirty on Liz’s ambitions with the floods.