By Ben Kerrigan-
Liz Truss will become the third female British prime minister after defeating Rishi Sunak in the Conservative Party leadership contest.
Ms Truss fulfilled expectations that she would succeed Boris Johnson winning by a significant 57% victory over Mr Sunak’s 43% was slimmer than in other recent contests. Ms Truss said it is an “honour to be elected” as she thanked her party for organising “one of the longest job interviews in history”.
In a short speech after the result was announced, she issued her thanks to her “friend” Boris Johnson, who will officially depart from No 10 on Tuesday.
Mr Johnson was forced to announce his resignation after a wave of ministers left his government over a series of failings in his government, notably partygate, when lockdown rules were flagrantly breached by government officials under the former prime minister’s watch. The final nail in the coffin came when it emerged that Boris Johnson pervert Mp Chris Finchet despite a number of allegations against him for sexual misconduct.
He will visit the Queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland to formally tender his resignation tomorrow, whilst Ms Truss will be invited by the Queen, who will invite to form a government
Liz Truss faces Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, which needs to be dealt as soon as possible to address inflationary pressures on the UK economy.
The new prime minister vowed to “deliver a bold plan” to cut taxes and grow the economy in her victory speech.
She said: “I will deliver on the energy crisis dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long term issues we have on energy supply.”
She is expected to put a price freeze on energy bills.
Some observers, including senior Tory MPs, have warned that Truss’s economic plan risks fuelling inflation, and could push up interest rates.
The former minister David Davis said on Sunday that Truss should “think quite hard about” her plans.
“The worst outcome is, as it were, to give low taxes a bad name,” Davis said.
Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said Truss’s plans could bring “not just extremely high borrowing in the short run, but also additional inflationary pressure”.
“She’s clearly absolutely right that we’ve had dreadful growth over the last 15 years,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The ‘but’ is that simply cutting taxes, cutting national insurance contributions, for example, is not a strategy for growth.”