Liz Truss has been declared the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following a bitter contest against Rishi Sunak.
It comes after a brutal summer of campaigning in order to decide who would succeed Boris Johnson to be the next Conservative Party leader.
The final tally was the "tightest margin since current rules were introduced" before the millennium.
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The Foreign Secretary will officially become Britain's 56th PM on Tuesday, when she travels to Balmoral to meet the Queen, who will invite her to form a government.
Johnson will also travel to Scotland to offer his formal resignation to the monarch before his successor takes over.
Tory MPs, peers and party grandees gathered in Westminster today for the announcement as the interminable leadership contest finally drew to a close.
Attendees at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre were told that Truss had won the race by 57% to 43%, after a ballot of 172,437 Conservative members.
Ex-Chancellor Sunak secured 60,399 votes, while Truss won the backing of 81,326 members - the tightest margin since current rules were introduced in 1998.
Truss praised her rival for a "hard-fought campaign" and used her victory speech to heap flattery on her "friend" Boris Johnson.
She said: “You got Brexit done, you crushed Jeremy Corbyn, you rolled out the vaccine and you stood up to Vladimir Putin. You are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle.”
Johnson was not seen in the audience after widespread reports that the lame-duck leader was bitter about being ousted from Downing Street.
After the speech, he tweeted his congratulations to Ms Truss and urged the party to unite behind her.
Johnson said: "I know she has the right plan to tackle the cost of living crisis, unite our party and continue the great work of uniting and levelling up our country.
"Now is the time for all Conservatives to get behind her 100 per cent."
In her victory speech, Ms Truss vowed to govern "as a Conservative", citing plans to cut taxes and grow the economy.
She said she would "deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people's energy bills but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply" - and name-checked the NHS as a key priority.
She also appeared to rule out an early general election - by claiming there will be a “great victory for the Conservative Party in 2024”.
Truss received a standing ovation from Tory members after her short speech.
Her defeated rival tweeted: "Thank you to everyone who voted for me in this campaign. I’ve said throughout that the Conservatives are one family.
"It’s right we now unite behind the new PM, Liz Truss, as she steers the country through difficult times."
Labour leader Keir Starmer said: "We've heard far more from the latest prime minister about cuts to corporation tax over the summer than we have about the cost-of-living crisis, the single most important thing that's bearing down on so many millions of households.
"That shows not only that she's out of touch, but she's not on the side of working people."
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