Truss, 47, who is currently foreign secretary, beat former finance minister Rishi Sunak after a leadership contest in which only around 170,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote. Truss received 81,326 votes to Sunak’s 60,399. She faces immediate pressure to deliver on her promises to tackle the UK’s cost-of-living crisis and an economy headed for a potentially long recession. Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to formally appoint Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday. The ceremony will take place at the Queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland, where the monarch spends her summer, rather than Buckingham Palace in London. The two-month leadership contest has left Britain with a power vacuum at a time of growing discontent amid spiraling energy and food costs. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not made any major policy decisions since he announced he was stepping down on July 7, and officials have insisted that measures to tackle the energy cost crisis will be delayed until his successor is in place. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of workers have gone on strike to demand better pay to keep up with relentlessly rising costs. Inflation is above 10% for the first time since the 1980s and the Bank of England has forecast it will hit a 42-year high of 13.3% in October. This is largely driven by rising energy bills, which will rise by 80% for the average household from next month. “I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. I will respond to the energy crisis by addressing people’s energy bills, but also by addressing the long-term issues we have in energy supply,” Truss told party members after her election. “I know our beliefs resonate with the British people: our beliefs in freedom, in being in control of your life, in low taxes, in personal responsibility,” he added. “I know this is why people voted for us in such numbers in 2019 and as leader of your party I intend to deliver what we promised those voters across our great country.” Truss won the support of many Conservatives with her zeal to limit government intervention and cut taxes. Both she and her opponent Sunak have spoken of their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and her free-market, small-government economics. But it is not clear how Truss’s right-wing brand of conservatism, which has played so well with party members – who represent far less than 1% of the UK’s adult population – will go down with the wider British public, especially those who have more need from government relief to afford essentials such as heating their homes this winter. Truss promised to act “immediately” to tackle rising energy bills, but declined to give details so far. “Members of the Conservative Party wanted this message of tax cuts. The country, I would guess, less so,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of London think tank Chatham House. “Right now you have people deeply agitated, many are very, very afraid to go into a year where all they can see is rising costs,” Maddox added. “Until he gets an answer to that, he has no claim to the popularity of the country, I think.” While the economy is sure to dominate the new prime minister’s first few months in office, Truss will also have to guide the UK on the international stage in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine, an increasingly assertive China and ongoing tensions with European Union for post-Brexit — especially in Northern Ireland. Australia, New Zealand and Japan congratulated Truss early on Tuesday and look forward to strengthening ties with the UK under her government. “He has been a staunch supporter of the UK’s ‘plunge’ to the Indo-Pacific and played a central role in advancing our historic free trade agreement,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. Truss will be the UK’s fourth Conservative prime minister in six years, joining Downing Street after Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron. Johnson was forced to resign after a series of ethics scandals that culminated in July, when dozens of ministers and junior officials resigned in protest over the handling of allegations of sexual harassment by a senior member of his government. Both Truss and Sunak were key figures in Johnson’s cabinet, although Sunak resigned in the final days of Johnson’s term. A Truss government may not go down well with many because it reminds voters too much of Johnson’s misdeeds, said Stephen Fielding, professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “He’s basically been elected as Boris Johnson 2.0 by Conservative members – he’s made it very clear that he’s a staunch supporter of Boris Johnson,” he said. “I think he’s going to have a really hard time getting out of all the Johnson shadow.” Truss and Sunak were the last two candidates to walk away from an initial field of 11 candidates for the leadership. Under Britain’s parliamentary system of government, the centre-right Conservative Party was allowed to hold internal elections to choose a new party leader and prime minister without going to the wider electorate. No new general election is required until December 2024.
