Liz Truss has won the internal Conservative Party election to become the country’s new prime minister, succeeding Boris Johnson.
Truss defeated Rishi Sunak after a five-week campaign that at times was tense and exposed significant differences among MPs and ministers.
At a meeting in Westminster, central London, on Monday, September 5, Graham Brady, the head of the party’s backbench 1922 committee, declared Liz Truss the winner.
Brady reported that Truss defeated Sunak with 81,386 votes from Conservative members to Sunak’s 63,099 votes.
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On Tuesday, Johnson is scheduled to give a goodbye statement on the steps of No. 10 before leaving Downing Street to formally resign in front of the Queen at Balmoral castle in the Scottish Highlands.
He announced the end of his time in the office around two months ago. It came after a mounting series of scandals, and mass resignations from his government prompted him to say he would leave.
Truss is due to follow Johnson to Scotland on Tuesday, where she will become prime minister in a meeting with the Queen when the monarch formally asks her to form and lead a government.
It is the first time the Queen has conducted such a handover outside of London, continuing a trend of the 96-year-old monarch limiting her movements as she ages.
First Speech
Liz Truss is due to give her first speech as prime minister on Tuesday afternoon, and is then expected to begin putting her Cabinet together.
Allies including Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, and Foreign Office minister James Cleverly are all likely to be given promotions, according to the well-connected Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman.
During the campaign, Truss pledged an emergency budget within a month that would include 30 billion in tax cuts, including a reversal of the National Insurance rise meant to help fund healthcare in the UK in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Truss signalled on Sunday that she would act on the looming energy crisis; with a report in The Daily Telegraph suggesting she may freeze bills with public money.
However, Truss, who has championed tax cuts as the best way to stimulate growth, also said she would take many actions to deal with the worsening economic picture and that “not all those decisions will be popular”.
