Liz Truss has won the Tory leadership and is set to become the UK’s next Prime Minister after a contest that left the Conservative Party bitterly divided and the country without political direction going into a winter fuel crisis.
Truss won 57 per cent of the party with 81,326 votes compared to Rishi Sunak’s 60,399 votes. But with less than 60 per cent of support, Truss now faces a divided parliamentary party and membership.
The Foreign Secretary had been widely tipped to win the Conservative leadership against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. She will be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen at a ceremony in Scotland on Tuesday. Truss has made tax cuts and the reversal of Sunak’s national insurance rise a priority for her government.
But she has so far refused to say what kind of support package she will deliver to counter soaring energy bills and a cost-of-living crisis that could leave many destitute.
Truss, 47, will be the third Conservative Prime Minister since 2016, when David Cameron quit after losing the Brexit vote. She will take control of a party deeply split over her tax-cutting agenda and sullied by three scandal-ridden years of Boris Johnson at Downing Street.
As well as dealing with a cost of living emergency, the new Prime Minister has to face down Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, tackle soaring inflation and demands from the SNP government for a second Scottish independence referendum.
Voting closed last Friday in the eight-week contest saw a total of 12 official hustings events, with Sunak and Truss touring the country.
The process turned into a summer-long slanging match of the previous decade of Tory rule with Truss offering Conservative members the 'red meat' of tax cuts and Sunak warning that such a move would be a disaster for the economy.
In the end Truss walked away as the winner when the formal announcement was made by Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs at the QEII conference centre in Westminster.
What happens next?
Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Truss are expected to travel to Balmoral rather than Buckingham Palace, for the appointment of the new Prime Minister on Tuesday, in a break from tradition.
The Queen will receive Johnson on Tuesday at her Aberdeenshire home, where he will formally tender his resignation. This will be followed by an audience with the new Tory leader, where she will be invited to form a government.
Truss will then return to London to make a speech on the steps of Downing Street before finalising her choices for Cabinet and wider ministerial roles and writing their first Prime Ministerial speech.
Truss is facing calls to appoint Cabinet members from all wings of the party if she becomes Prime Minister and is under immediate pressure to announce a response to the cost of living crisis.
It is likely that her first major act as PM, after receiving the nuclear codes for the UK’s deterrent, will be to announce a freeze on energy bills, a policy proposed by Labour last month, and also championed by Gordon Brown.
Scottish Power has already proposed a £100 billion plan for a two-year energy bill freeze, backed by other energy companies and financed by loans underwritten by the Treasury.
To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here.
