Liz Truss Elected New UK Prime Minister

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Facts

  • Liz Truss will become the U.K.'s next Prime Minister after securing 81,326 Conservative Party members' votes (57.4%), it was announced on Monday. Speaking to an auditorium of her Party colleagues, she said, "we will deliver, we will deliver, and we will deliver."
  • The news concluded a two-month-long contest between Truss and her rival, former chancellor Rishi Sunak, who won 60,399 votes (42.6%). Truss will become Tory leader with the smallest ratio of party member support since Iain Duncan Smith introduced the membership ballot two decades ago.
  • On Tues., Truss will meet with the Queen at Balmoral Castle where she will be formally asked to form a government. Therese Coffey, the Sec. for Work and Pensions, has confirmed to reporters that the new PM will also confirm her new cabinet on Tuesday.
  • Boris Johnson, along with former PM David Cameron and defeated leadership candidate Sunak, called for Conservative Party unity following the results.
  • The former foreign secretary inherits a dire in-tray, particularly considering the current state of the U.K. economy, public finances following the COVID pandemic and the effect of the war in Ukraine on domestic energy prices.
  • Inflation has already hit more than 10% in consumer spending and there is speculation that the UK's energy price cap - already at an average of £3,549 per household per year - could exceed £5K in 2023.

Sources: CNN, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Newsbud.

Narratives

  • Right narrative, as provided by Telegraph. The UK's incoming PM has been nothing but dutiful and committed to her party since she entered politics. Now she is ready to lead from the front with an assured, ideologically conservative mandate. Truss represents a kind of change and flexibility that will serve her well in her new role.
  • Left narrative, as provided by The Guardian. Liz Truss may be a committed small-state ideologue, but what the UK currently needs is government intervention to help people and businesses through an unprecedented period of hardship. There is a significant chance that this Conservative's premiership will rely on the Labour Party's ideology of state interventionism.