(CNN) –– Liz Truss will take over the reins as UK prime minister following winning the majority of votes in the ruling Conservative Party on Monday. The current foreign secretary will succeed Boris Johnson, who resigned in July following a series of scandals.
Truss, who served as Johnson’s chancellor for the past year, defeated rival Rishi Sunak with 57% of the Conservative Party vote. former Minister of Finance, which got 43%. The leader comes to lead a nation facing a growing economic and social crisis.
The new prime minister will take office on Tuesday, following Johnson officially tenders her resignation to Queen Elizabeth. On that day, the monarch will have separate audiences with Truss and Johnson at Balmoral, Scotland, at which she will accept her resignation and name her successor in a ceremony. Also on Tuesday, Johnson will remove her belongings from the official Downing Street residence and the new leader will move in.
Liz Truss: “Boris, you got Brexit done”
Liz Truss gives her victory speech following winning the majority of votes in the UK Conservative Party on Monday. (Credit: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Truss vowed to take action to tackle the economic crisis during her brief victory speech in London on Monday. Without offering details, he promised a “bold plan” to cut taxes and generate economic growth. In addition to “addressing the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills but also the long-term problems that we have with the energy supply.”
The new prime minister also paid tribute to Johnson during her speech. “Boris: you got Brexit done, you defeated Jeremy Corbyn, you launched the vaccine and you took on Vladimir Putin,” she said. And then she added: “I know our beliefs resonate with the British people,” she told the crowd of Conservative members. “I campaigned as a Conservative and I will govern as a Conservative.”
This was a closer victory than anticipated for Truss, the long-time favorite for her popularity with party members. Her win ends weeks of a bitter political campaign, in which Sunak accused the chancellor of risking a prolonged recession if she goes ahead with promised tax cuts.
Truss is the third woman to win the position of prime minister in the United Kingdom, following Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
Who is Liz Truss?
Liz Truss can be defined as a political chameleon who has gone from being a radical abolitionist to a standard-bearer for the Eurosceptic conservative right.
Only elected to Parliament in 2010, she has established herself in a relatively short period as a political force pursuing her agenda with relentless vigor and unequivocal enthusiasm.
To say that Truss has been on a political journey would be an understatement. She was born in 1975 into a family that she herself has described as “left of Labour”, the main socialist opposition. He grew up in parts of the UK that traditionally didn’t vote Conservative, moving between Scotland and the north of England.
Unlike his privately educated colleagues in Johnson’s cabinet, Truss went to public school in Leeds and later earned a place at Oxford University. There he was an active member of the Liberal Democrats, a centrist opposition party that has long been an effective opponent of the Conservatives in much of England.
During his time as a Liberal Democrat, Truss supported the legalization of cannabis and the abolition of the royal family, positions that are at odds with what most would consider mainstream conservatism in 2022.
Truss says she joined the Conservatives in 1996, just two years following she gave a speech at a Liberal Democrat conference calling for an end to the monarchy.
Even then, her fellow liberal Democrats questioned her sincerity, detecting traits they still see in her today.
“Honestly, I think she was saying what her voters wanted to hear back then, whether she was talking regarding decriminalizing drugs or abolishing the monarchy,” Neil Fawcett, a Liberal Democrat councilman who campaigned with Truss in Washington, previously told CNN. the 1990s. “I think she’s someone who entertains the audience she’s speaking to, and I really don’t know if she ever believes anything she says, back then or now.”
Truss has certainly continued to capture the attention of her audience. Since he joined the Conservatives and is a Member of Parliament, he has fervently supported just regarding every ideology imaginable. She loyally served three prime ministers in several different cabinet positions, and was foreign secretary.
In particular, he supported remaining in the European Union in 2016. At the time, Truss tweeted that he backed those who wanted to stay in the bloc because “it is in Britain’s economic interest and means we can focus on vital economic and social reform at home.” .”
Truss now backs Brexit, saying her fears before the referendum that it might cause “disruption” were wrong. The challenger is even threatening to scrap all remaining European Union legislation in the UK and nullify the Brexit deal that Johnson negotiated with Brussels in a way the EU believes is illegal. She also blamed France and the EU for border controls at Dover, the main port between the UK and France.
Why did Boris Johnson resign?
On July 7, Boris Johnson announced his resigns as leader of the Conservative Party and thus as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, following a series of scandals that engulfed his government. The news triggered the internal process in the party to designate his successor that culminated in the election of Liz Truss.
But, How did you get to the point of giving up?
The immediate cause of the crisis What led to Johnson’s resignation is the resignation a week earlier of deputy caucus chief Chris Pincher, amid allegations that he had groped two guests at a private dinner the night before. Although he did not directly admit to the allegations, Pincher said in a letter to Johnson: “I drank too much last night” and “embarrassed myself and other people”.
What got Johnson into a bigger bind was the ruses of his administration’s press officers in trying to explain why Pincher was ever in government in the first place.
Initially, as new reports of past misconduct by Pincher emerged in light of his resignation, Downing Street denied that the prime minister had any knowledge of the allegations, which came while Pincher was foreign secretary. .
When it became clear that this was not sustainable, Johnson’s team said that they knew regarding the past allegations, but that they had been “settled”. When it emerged that one of the allegations once morest Pincher, previously unreported to him, had been confirmed, Johnson’s spokesman explained that “resolved” might mean that it had been confirmed.
Then, on July 5, Simon McDonald, a former senior Foreign Office official, revealed that Johnson was told in person of the outcome of an investigation into Pincher’s conduct.
That same day and following hearing this news, the Minister of Health Sajid Javid and the Minister of Economy Rishi Sunak they resigned following days of pressure in Downing Street over how allegations of sexual misconduct by a member of government were handled.
“I am sorry to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership, and therefore you have also lost my confidence,” wrote Javid.
Minutes before Sunak and Javid announced their resignation, Johnson acknowledged that “it was a mistake” to appoint Pincher to his government.
But the resignations did not stop there. Saqib Bhatti, Parliamentary Private Secretary to former Minister Javid, also made the decision to resign, while Jonathan Gullis, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, public a resignation letter on social media, saying he has resigned “with a heavy heart”.
In addition, the vice president of the Conservative Party, Bim Afolami, resigned party in a live television presentation, following Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted he was aware of the earlier allegations once morest Chris Pincher.
In total, there were more than 50 members of the government who resigned from their posts, including, in addition to those mentioned, the Secretary of Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, the Treasury Secretary for Finance, Helen Whately, and the Minister of Security, Damian Hinds.
For months, Johnson faced a barrage of criticism regarding his conduct and that of his government, including illegal parties that were staged at his Downing Street offices during the pandemic and for which he and others were fined.
In June, survived a vote of confidencebut the final tally of lawmakers who rebelled once morest him was higher than his supporters expected: 41% of his own parliamentary party refused to back him.
In between other scandals, Johnson tried to overturn the suspension of an ally accused of misconduct; he lost two MPs due to sex scandals and then failed to win back his seats in the by-elections.
With information from Jack Guy, Ivana Kottasová and Rob Picheta.
