Liz Truss is named as leader of the governing Conservative Party and Britain’s next prime minister with 81,326 votes. Poised to take power when the country faces a cost of living crisis, industrial unrest and a recession. Tory MP Sir Graham Brady announced the winner of the Conservative leadership contest – and the next prime minister. Sunak got 60,399 votes.
Tory party chairman Andrew Stephenson tells the QEII the leadership contest has shown the Conservatives in “good voice and good strength”. He says Truss and Sunak have taken more than 600 questions over 14 hours of questioning.
After weeks of an often bad-tempered and divisive party leadership contest that pitted Truss against Rishi Sunak, a former finance minister, today’s announcement triggered the beginning of a handover from Boris Johnson. He was forced to announce his resignation in July after months of scandal.
On Tuesday, the winner will travel to Scotland to meet Queen Elizabeth, who will ask the new leader to form a government.
Truss, will become the Conservatives’ fourth prime minister since a 2015 election. Over that period, the country has been buffeted from crisis to crisis. It now faces what is forecast to be a prolonged recession triggered by sky-rocketing inflation, which hit 10.1% in July.
Foreign minister under Boris Johnson, Truss, 47, has promised to act quickly to tackle Britain’s cost of living crisis, saying that within a week, she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and secure future fuel supplies.
Speaking in a TV interview on Sunday, she declined to give details of the measures she says will reassure millions of people who fear they will be unable to pay their fuel bills as winter approaches.
She has signalled during her leadership campaign she would challenge convention by scrapping tax increases and cutting other levies that some economists say would fuel inflation.
That, plus a pledge to review the remit of the Bank of England while protecting its independence, has prompted some investors to dump the pound and government bonds.
Truss faces a long, costly and difficult to-do list, which opposition lawmakers say results from 12 years of a poor Conservative government. Several have called for an early election – something Truss has said she would not allow.
Veteran Conservative lawmaker David Davis described the challenges she would take on as prime minister as “probably the second most difficult brief of post-war prime ministers” after Conservative Margaret Thatcher in 1979.