Liz Truss will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: The Conservative Party of the United Kingdom announced the results of the intra-party contest for party leadership and the job at No. 10 Downing Street, naming British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as the country’s next Prime Minister and party leader.
Ms. Truss received 57% of the vote, or 81,326 votes, to former Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s 42%, or 60,399 votes, with 82% of Conservative members voting.
Liz Truss to take over as U.K.’s next Prime Minister
With Monday’s announcement, Ms. Truss is set to become Britain’s 56th Prime Minister and the third woman to hold the job. She will go to Balmoral Castle in Scotland on Tuesday. There, Queen Elizabeth II will ask her to put together a new government.
In her victory speech at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, Ms. Truss thanked the Conservative Party members for the “longest job interview in history.” The contest began in early July, after several top ministers in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet quit, including Mr. Sunak.
Liz Truss thanked both Mr. Sunak and Mr. Johnson
The new Prime Minister thanked both Mr. Sunak and Mr. Johnson in exaggerated ways. She had stayed in Mr. Johnson’s cabinet, which may have made her more popular than Mr. Sunak.
“Boris, you made Brexit happen, you beat Jeremy Corbyn (the former leader of the Labour Party), you got the vaccine out, and you stood up to Vladimir Putin. “People from Kyiv to Carlisle like you,” she said.
On Tuesday, Ms. Truss will take over a long list of problems. The U.K. is dealing with rising inflation, the likes of which it hasn’t seen in about 40 years (it’s currently above 10%), a looming recession, energy bills that could put many Britons in fuel poverty, and a war between Russia and Ukraine in Europe that has been going on for years.
“I ran as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative,” Ms. Truss said as she promised to cut taxes, bring growth, improve the National Health Service (NHS), and deal with the energy bill crisis. She said over the weekend that once she got to No. 10, she would have a plan to fix energy prices right away and a longer-term plan for getting energy to people.
Main point of contention between Ms. Truss and Mr. Sunak
The main point of contention between Ms. Truss and Mr. Sunak was whether to cut taxes first or to worry about inflation first. Mr. Sunak had said that borrowing money to pay for tax cuts was not the Conservative way to do things.
Even though he didn’t speak at the auditorium, he sent out a tweet in which he thanked everyone who voted for him and said that it was time for everyone to get behind the new Prime Minister “as she leads the country through hard times.”
“I have always said that the Conservatives are like a big family,” he wrote.
Prime Minister Modi congratulated Ms. Truss as soon as the news came out that she had won.
“Sure that the India-UK Comprehensive Strategic Partnership will get stronger under your leadership. He wrote on Twitter, “Wish you the best in your new job and responsibilities.”