It’s official. The UK now has its third-ever woman Prime Minister with the news that Liz Truss has taken over as leader of the Conservative Party.
When Boris Johnson first announced he would be stepping down as UK Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party in early July, he sparked a fierce succession contest that relatively quickly condensed down to two frontrunners – former Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
The intervening weeks since Johnson’s declaration and today’s statement have seen Truss and Sunak go head-to-head on a range of policy considerations, with Truss widely considered the odds-on favourite to become the Tories’ fourth leader in just six years.
When Johnson announced his decision to step down, he noted that he wanted to name a successor in time for the Tory party conference in October. Voting in the two-month contest closed on Friday, with a result announced at 12.30pm today in London. Truss will take power on Tuesday after the outgoing and incoming leaders have met Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral in Scotland.
Truss takes the reins of the UK to be faced with a decidedly uninviting inbox, with the nation facing a winter with a surging cost-of-living crisis, spiking energy prices and a recessionary environment. She is also tasked with the undertaking of quickly uniting the Conservative Party after a hostile and divisive leadership campaign emphasised the discord in the party.
The contest to succeed Johnson was a disharmonious affair, with senior Tories including Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab and former Cabinet minister Michael Gove condemning Truss’s plans for the economic and regulatory environment while Truss’s campaign accused Sunak of “mansplaining” and criticised his record of raising taxes as Chancellor.
Truss is also faced with the mission of reaffirming the Tory Party’s standing with the electorate, given the series of scandals which led to Johnson’s departure. A report from the FT highlighted that the Conservatives trail the Labour Party in the polls, having suffered heavy special election defeats in recent months – both in their traditional southern and rural heartlands and in parts of northern England that Johnson won from the main opposition in 2019.
However, Prime Minister Truss has until January 2025 -- the latest possible date for an election – to reinvigorate the party and reverse its fortunes.
