Liz Truss has been elected as the Conservative Party’s new leader, the party announced Monday, and she will take office Tuesday as Britain’s new prime minister to steer the country through an acute cost-of-living crisis.
The 47-year-old Truss, who is currently foreign secretary, beat former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak after a leadership contest in which only about 170,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote. Truss received 81,326 votes, compared with Sunak’s 60,399.
She faces immediate pressure to deliver on her promises to tackle the cost-of-living crisis walloping the U.K. and an economy heading into a potentially lengthy 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 is spending her summer, rather than Buckingham Palace in London.
The two-month leadership contest left Britain with a power vacuum at a time of growing discontent across the country amid spiraling energy and food costs. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made no major policy decisions since he announced he was stepping down on July 7, and officials insisted that measures to address the energy cost crisis would be deferred 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 that will reach a 42-year high of 13.3% in October. That’s largely driven by soaring energy bills, which will jump 80% for the average household starting next month.
“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. 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,” Truss told party members after she was elected.
“I know that our beliefs resonate with the British people: Our beliefs in freedom, in the ability to control your own life, in low taxes, in personal responsibility,” she added. “I know that’s why people voted for us in such numbers in 2019 and as your party leader I intend to deliver what we promised those voters right across our great country.”
Truss has won the support of many Conservatives with her zeal in rolling back state intervention and slashing taxes. Both she and her rival Sunak have spoken of their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and her free-market, small-government economics.