Liz Truss is the next UK Prime Minister: NPR

British Prime Minister-elect Liz Truss pledged to hand over a raft of issues after she was appointed as the new leader of the Conservative Party on Monday. Truss will be the UK’s third female prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

Adrien Denis/AFP via Getty Images

Hide caption

Caption switch

Adrien Denis/AFP via Getty Images

British Prime Minister-elect Liz Truss pledged to hand over a raft of issues after she was appointed as the new leader of the Conservative Party on Monday. Truss will be the UK’s third female prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

Adrien Denis/AFP via Getty Images

Britain’s Conservative Party has announced the new party leader as Liz Truss, who has served as Foreign Secretary for the past 12 months. Queen Elizabeth will formally appoint her as prime minister, likely on Tuesday afternoon.

“I will present a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” Truss said in her award speech, adding that she would also tackle challenges from high energy bills to the National Health Service.

The result follows a nationwide vote by grassroots party members that lasted several weeks this summer. Truss will become the country’s fourth leader in a politically turbulent six-year period.

This is only the third time in history that a woman has taken power at 10 Downing Street, but it is the third time in recent years that there has been a change of prime minister without a national general election.

“We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver,” Truss said, echoing the campaign’s main theme. “And we’ll have a big Conservative victory in 2024” – when the next national election is due.

replace gears Boris Johnson, which faded due to a series of scandals that escalated in the first half of this year. Having lost the support of not only the majority of his fellow conservative lawmakers, but also many of his ministers, he was forced to resign.

Truss spent the summer campaigning against Rishi Sunak, the former British chancellor who was her contender for leadership of the Conservative Party. The competition was decided by the votes of nearly 142,000 party members. Truss received more than 81,000 of those votes, the lowest of any leader in recent history.

Johnson has continued to serve as interim leader over the past few months and is expected to meet the king in Scotland on Tuesday to present his formal resignation.

As the new leader, Truss is likely to make a statement outside 10 Downing Street later Tuesday. You will immediately be faced with responsibility for Britain’s rapidly escalating energy crisis, as both consumers and businesses face record-high gas and electricity costs thanks to the war in Ukraine, and a corresponding spike in inflation threatens to push the country into a tailspin. big recession.

Dubbed “the prime minister in waiting” by one British newspaper, Truss said in an interview with the BBC this weekend that she would draw up proposals to tackle this economic challenge within days, and aimed to “act immediately”.

See also  The Russo-Ukrainian War and Crimea News: Live Updates

earlier in Driving competitionTruss hasn’t garnered as much support among her fellow conservative lawmakers as her opponent Sunak. And while Sunak promised to support a new government even if he was not a leader, political analysts said it would be difficult for Truss to unite the divided conservatives, who still enjoy a large majority in the country’s parliament. Johnson’s phenomenal success as an activist during the last national elections.

Upon the announcement, the party’s co-chair, Andrew Stephenson, said this summer’s long and drawn-out competition – in which the two “brilliant” candidates submitted hundreds of questions from tens of thousands of members – showed the party was still “in good shape”. Good voice and strength.” He was also met with long applause when he thanked Johnson, who “rose to the challenge and delivered” during the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently the conflict in Ukraine. He also thanked Truss Johnson and described him as a friend “admired from Kyiv to Carlisle.”

Before the result was announced, Sir Graham Brady, who oversees the committee of Conservative lawmakers responsible for selecting a new leader, said the ballot was “free and fair”, thanking party members and all candidates, and said both Truss and Snack were “fantastic” and ran “excellent campaigns”.