Liz Truss, West Norfolk MP, announced as new Prime Minister and Conservative leader
South West Norfolk MP Liz Truss has been announced as the country's new Prime Minister, taking over from Boris Johnson.
Ms Truss, who represents Downham and Swaffham, has beaten off competition from her rival Rishi Sunak to become the new Conservative Party leader with 81,326 votes to 60,399.
She has become the country’s third female prime minister after securing victory in the Tory leadership contest.
The new leader made a speech following the announcement, she will then spend the rest of the day finalising her choices for Cabinet and wider ministerial roles and writing her first prime ministerial speech.
Mr Johnson and Ms Truss are then set to go to Balmoral, rather than Buckingham Palace, for the appointment of the new prime minister by the Queen on Tuesday, in a break from tradition.
One of the biggest challenges facing the West Norfolk MP will be how she responds to the cost of living crisis.
Reports from over the weekend suggested that she was strongly considering freezing energy bills in a bid to ease the burden on households this winter.
Having made tax cuts a key priority during her leadership campaign, Ms Truss had remain tight-lipped about what kind of support package she might introduce as the UK faces the prospect of soaring energy bills and a worsening cost of living crisis.
But reports in The Daily Telegraph and The Times suggest she is likely to introduce an energy bills freeze in some form.
The Times reports the package could be on the scale of the furlough scheme introduced by then-chancellor Rishi Sunak when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, while The Telegraph suggests the specifics of such a policy are still being debated.
Ms Truss had used an interview on the BBC on Sunday to insist that she would within a week reveal fresh help for struggling households, but repeatedly declined to spell out what those support measures might look like.
“Before you have been elected as prime minister, you don’t have all the wherewithal to get the things done,” she told the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
“This is why it will take a week to sort out the precise plans and make sure we are able to announce them. That is why I cannot go into details at this stage. It would be wrong.”
