Former Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss will today take over power as Britain’s next Prime Minister (PM) after she was named leader of the governing Conservative Party to replace Boris Johnson.
Truss, the third female to serve in this capacity, will become PM today after travelling to meet the Queen at Balmoral in Scotland. Yesterday’s announcement triggered the beginning of a handover from Boris Johnson and his departure from No. 10 Dowing Street.
Johnson was forced to announce his resignation in July after months of scandal and he will travel to Scotland to meet Queen Elizabeth today to officially tender his resignation.
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Lawmakers, through a body called the 1922 Committee, set the terms of the contest to replace him. The broad outlines of the two-stage process remained constant. First, Conservative lawmakers hold a series of ballots among themselves to whittle the number of contenders down to two.
Then there’s a ballot on the final choice among the party’s entire dues-paying membership. These are members of the public who pay a standard annual subscription of £25 (about $30) and there are about 160,000 of them.
Eleven lawmakers sought to run this time, with the final two, Mr. Rishi Sunak and Truss emerging on July 20 after five rounds of voting.
In a short victory speech after the announcement, Truss said it was an honour to be elected after undergoing “one of the longest job interviews in history.”
She thanked Sunak for a “hard-fought campaign and pledged to deliver a bold plan.”
Truss got 57 per cent of eligible votes among Conservative Party members, while Sunak, former Chancellor of the exchequer, got 42 per cent. His numbers didn’t tally with what the opinion polls had earlier suggested.
She would be coming into office at a time when the country faces a cost-of-living crisis, industrial unrest and a recession.
Truss, aged 47, has promised to act quickly to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, cut taxes, grow the economy, saying that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and secure future fuel supplies.
