Liz Truss speaks after being announced as Britain's next Prime Minister at The Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, England, on Sept. 5.HANNAH MCKAY/Reuters
Liz Truss will become Britain’s new prime minister on Tuesday, and the heretofore low-profile politician will face a host of challenges, including a cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine and fears of a looming recession.
Ms. Truss defeated Rishi Sunak, former chancellor of the exchequer, in a runoff ballot among Conservative Party members to replace Boris Johnson as party leader. The results were released Monday; Ms. Truss took 57 per cent of the votes.
She and Mr. Johnson will travel to Balmoral Castle in Scotland on Tuesday for audiences with the Queen. Mr. Johnson will formally resign as prime minister and Ms. Truss will take over with two years left before a general election must be called.
“My friends, we need to show that we will deliver over the next two years. I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” she said in brief remarks to party members after the results were announced at a conference centre in London. “During this leadership campaign, I campaigned as a Conservative and I will govern as a Conservative.”
It’s a remarkable victory for Ms. Truss, 47, who was not the favourite to win.
Most Conservative Members of Parliament wanted Mr. Sunak, 42, as leader. He easily won the first stage of the race in July, which involved five rounds of voting among MPs to narrow the field of candidates to two from eight. Party members picked the winner – and Ms. Truss proved more popular with the rank and file, winning 81,326 votes compared with 60,339 for Mr. Sunak.
In a tweet, Mr. Johnson congratulated Ms. Truss and touted his own record in office. “I have been proud to serve as leader of the Conservative Party for the last three years, winning the biggest majority for decades,” he said.
Ms. Truss comes into office with a low public profile despite serving in cabinet for eight years and holding senior posts such as trade and foreign affairs.
“You have to go back really quite a long way to have a prime minister who wasn’t very well defined in the public mind when they came in,” said Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “She has an opportunity to define herself. She starts as a blank page.”
The new prime minister will have little opportunity to ease into the job. Britain is confronting spiralling energy prices, soaring inflation and widespread labour unrest. There have been growing calls for the government to provide substantial financial support to individuals and business owners who are struggling with an 80-per-cent rise in natural gas prices.
Ms. Truss has been vague about how she will address the challenges. During the leadership campaign she promised to cut taxes and find new sources of energy. But she has not provided any details or said whether she supports capping gas prices or offering financial help.
Early in the campaign she argued against government “handouts” but she has since promised to unveil a robust plan to tackle the energy crisis within a week of becoming prime minister. News media reports on Monday indicated that she was considering freezing energy bills for households, something the opposition Labour Party has been demanding.
“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,” Ms. Truss said Monday.
“She enters office with a lot of challenges,” said Iain Duncan Smith, a Tory MP and a former party leader who backed Ms. Truss. “She’s clear about what we’ve go to do. She wants to get us back, quite rightly, to the idea of a party that trusts people to get on with their own lives.”
Dr. Ford noted that Ms. Truss is in something of a bind. She spent the leadership campaign appealing to the party’s right wing, and she signalled that she was against big spending increases. It will be almost impossible for her to stick to that commitment given the scale of the energy problem, he said.
But if she strays too far from her campaign pledge, Dr. Ford said, she could incur the wrath of right-wing Tory MPs who have been quick to move against other party leaders including Mr. Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May.
Mr. Johnson, who will remain as an MP, has also not ruled out making a comeback; he could pose a threat to Ms. Truss should she falter. Ms. Truss is also expected to replace a host of senior cabinet ministers and relegate them to the backbenches where they could foment unrest.
Even if she makes it to the next election as the party’s leader – a national vote must be held by January, 2025 – the Conservatives have been trailing the Labour Party in most opinion polls for weeks. A YouGov poll of around 2,400 Britons on Monday found that 50 per cent of those surveyed were disappointed that she will be prime minister, compared with 22 per cent who said they were pleased.
Canada certainly has a friend in Ms. Truss.
She has long admired this country and once said that a year she spent at Parkcrest Elementary School in Burnaby, B.C., in 1987 “changed her outlook on life.”
“Obviously Canada has a special relationship with the U.K. and I have no doubt that will continue and be enhanced with Liz as prime minister,” said James Cleverly, a senior Tory MP and cabinet minister who is expected to be named foreign secretary by Ms. Truss.
When asked whether that could mean border-trade ties, Mr. Cleverly said: “Trading with your friend is as important as standing shoulder to shoulder with your friends. I have no doubt that the strength of the relationship between the U.K. and Canada will continue and will go from strength to strength.”
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.