Britain's Next Prime Minister: Liz Truss to Replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister (Published 2022) (2024)

LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party announced on Monday that its members had chosen Liz Truss to replace Boris Johnson as leader, turning to a hawkish diplomat, party stalwart and free-market champion to govern a country facing the gravest economic crisis in a generation.

Ms. Truss, 47, prevailed over Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, whose resignation in July set in motion Mr. Johnson’s messy ouster. Her victory, by a margin of 57.4 percent to 42.6 percent, was widely expected in recent weeks after she took a commanding lead in the polls.

It makes her Britain’s fourth prime minister in six years and third female leader, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. Like them, she will be greeted by a fearsome array of problems.

Double-digit inflation, a looming recession, labor unrest, soaring household energy bills and possible fuel shortages this winter — all will confront Ms. Truss as she moves into 10 Downing Street. She also must repair a party deeply divided after Mr. Johnson’s turbulent three-year tenure, which peaked in 2019 with a landslide general election victory but descended into unrelenting scandals after that.

In a businesslike speech to a party gathering after her victory was announced, Ms. Truss promised a “bold plan” to lower taxes and bolster the economy, adding: “We will deliver, we will deliver and we will deliver.”

Ms. Truss, who served in Mr. Johnson’s cabinet and was not part of the Tory rebellion that led to his departure, will formally assume the prime minister’s title on Tuesday in a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the queen is vacationing. Mr. Johnson will bid farewell to the monarch just before that, drawing a curtain, at least for now, on his career as a frontline politician.

Ms. Truss, who was most recently foreign secretary, emerged from a crowded field of eight candidates by appealing to party members with a single-minded message of tax cuts and smaller government. These are reliable Tory party touchstones, but some economists said her proposals would do little to solve Britain’s problems, and could even worsen them.

Once the field narrowed to two candidates, Ms. Truss never relinquished her lead over Mr. Sunak. He would have made history of his own if he had won, becoming the first nonwhite prime minister in British history.

But Mr. Sunak’s message — that the government should not cut taxes before it tamed inflation — was less appealing to the 160,000 or so party members who cast ballots. Many also had not forgiven him for his role in Mr. Johnson’s ouster; he was one of two major Conservative figures, along with Sajid Javid, to resign from the cabinet, prompting a wave of defections that made Mr. Johnson’s position untenable.

Ms. Truss won 81,326 votes to Mr. Sunak’s 60,399 votes, a margin that while comfortable was not as overwhelming as some of the polls suggested it would be. Analysts noted that Mr. Sunak, not Ms. Truss, was the top choice of Conservative lawmakers in the first round of the leadership contest.

Still, Ms. Truss has made a remarkable political journey to the top of the Conservative Party. Raised in a left-wing family, with a father who was a mathematician and a mother who was a nurse and teacher, she was an active member of Britain’s centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, as a student at Oxford University, once calling for a vote to abolish the monarchy.

Switching to the Tories after she graduated, Ms. Truss advanced through six ministerial posts under three Conservative prime ministers: Mr. Johnson, Mrs. May, and David Cameron. Like Mr. Cameron, she campaigned against Britain’s departure from the European Union in the 2016 referendum campaign, only to become a full-throated Brexiteer after the vote.

Ms. Truss is likely to be judged by her handling of Britain’s coming economic storm. With household energy bills spiking by 80 percent, and some economists predicting that inflation will top 20 percent by early next year, many believe Ms. Truss will have to announce sweeping measures to shield vulnerable families.

She has declined to give details on potential state aid and has ruled out measures like fuel rationing or a new windfall profit tax on energy companies. At her final campaign event in London last week, Ms. Truss pledged not to impose any additional taxes, a promise that some experts said would be hard to keep.

For the past eight weeks through the Conservative Party’s leadership contest, the severity of Britain’s economic troubles only worsened. The new prime minister, Liz Truss, will be greeted with a long list of demands for rapid and aggressive support to alleviate the pain caused by the rising cost of living.

Looming over the new government is the specter of stagflation — an unpleasant mix of stagnant economic growth and high inflation. Consumer prices are rising at their fastest pace in four decades as the rate of inflation exceeds 10 percent and is expected to keep climbing.

Meanwhile, the economy contracted in the second quarter, and the Bank of England is forecasting a long recession to begin later this year as wages lag and household budgets are squeezed by rising food and energy costs. Household incomes, adjusted for inflation and taxes, are predicted to fall sharply this year and next, in the worst decline in records dating back to the 1960s, the central bank said.

Britain caps household energy bills, but average household bills will increase by 80 percent because the cap will be lifted, both in October and again early next year. And there are calls for urgent action to help low-income households as it becomes increasingly accepted that a relief package laid out in May is inadequate. Ms. Truss said on Sunday that should introduce a package to help people with energy bills within a week of taking office.

Small businesses — especially energy-intensive ones, such as pubs and restaurants — are warning of widespread closures over the winter as companies won’t be able to afford their energy bills. The pub industry said there needs to be “swift and substantial” government intervention to avoid large-scale job losses.

There is also a growing number of labor strikes, as workers across industries demand pay raises in line with the cost of living. Among those walking out or threatening to are port workers, nurses, teachers, train drivers and mail service personnel.

Beyond these immediate problems, Britain also has many long-running economic challenges to overcome. How will the new government try to make a success of Brexit, which so far has made trading with Britain’s closest neighbors more cumbersome and costly? Can the government close the inequality gap between London and the rest of the country? Amid an energy crisis, will the government get on track to meet its legally binding targets to reach net zero carbon emissions?

The gloomy economic prospects for Britain are clear in financial markets. The pound dropped 4.5 percent against the U.S. dollar in August, its worst month in nearly six years, and is now trading at $1.15. It’s at its lowest level since March 2020, and approaching the lowest since 1985. The price of British government bonds has dropped as investors turn away from British assets and expect the central bank to need to raise interest rates sharply to rein in inflation.

LONDON — After an unexpectedly bitter contest to succeed Boris Johnson, senior Conservatives on Monday called on the party to unite behind Liz Truss, their new leader and Britain’s next prime minister, while opposition politicians dismissed her prospects of solving the country’s acute economic problems.

“The Conservatives are one family,” said Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer who was defeated in the leadership race by Ms. Truss. He added in a Twitter post: “It’s right we now unite behind the new PM, Liz Truss, as she steers the country through difficult times.”

Mr. Johnson also congratulated his successor on a “decisive win,” saying that “she has the right plan to tackle the cost of living crisis.”

“Now is the time for all Conservatives to get behind her 100 percent,” Mr. Johnson said.

She also received messages of support from Mr. Johnson’s two Conservative predecessors as prime minister, Theresa May and David Cameron. But Ms. Truss was not the top choice of Conservative Party lawmakers, who drew up the short list of two candidates from which she was chosen. She now faces a formidable series of problems including soaring energy costs, a likely recession, labor strikes and rising inflation and interest rates.

Penny Mordaunt, who also ran for party leader but was defeated in the initial stages of balloting, said that Ms. Truss was “very well prepared and she understands the scale of the challenge that lies ahead.”

“We want to support her, come behind her and deliver for the people of this country,” she added.

Opposition parties were characteristically disdainful of the result. Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, argued that “the change we need in Britain is not a change at the top of the Tory party,” and that “only Labour can offer Britain the fresh start we all deserve.”

Ian Blackford, who leads the Scottish National Party’s lawmakers in the Parliament said in a statement that “all the signs suggest Liz Truss is shaping up to be even worse than Boris Johnson.” He said that Ms. Truss’ election signaled that the Conservative Party was “lurching further to the right, and continuing to impose damaging policies like the extreme Brexit that has raised the cost of living.”

Liz Truss may yet order a major state intervention in Britain’s troubled economy and energy markets. But speaking on Monday after the Conservative Party announced that she will become the next prime minister, Ms. Truss struck a defiant tone, saying she would stick to the free-market policies on which she campaigned.

“I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative,” Ms. Truss told a party gathering in a brief, businesslike speech after her victory was announced.

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” she added. “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.”

During the seven-week campaign, Ms. Truss, 47, promised targeted relief for households dealing with soaring electricity and gas bills. But she declined to give details and ruled out imposing another windfall profits tax on energy companies, one of the most obvious ways to pay for a government freeze on energy rates. She also said she did not plan to ration fuel if there were shortages this winter.

“I know that our beliefs resonate with the British people,” Ms. Truss said. “Our beliefs in freedom, in the ability to control your own lives, in low taxes, in personal responsibility.” She added: “I intend to deliver what we promised those voters.”

Ms. Truss is expected to lay out plans for dealing with soaring energy bills on Thursday. However intent she is on cutting taxes and shrinking the government, there are expectations that she may announce a major government aid program, potentially on the scale of the relief Britain offered during the coronavirus pandemic.

LONDON — Outside the anonymous conference center where the result of the Conservative Party leadership contest was announced, protesters greeted some arriving lawmakers with cries of, “You’re a disgrace.”

Inside, an expectant hubbub drowned out the background music piped into the Queen Elizabeth II Center, a bland, modern complex more accustomed to hosting seminars and commercial gatherings than pivotal moments in British political history. Party apparatchiks, members of Parliament and journalists gathered in the hall, a short walk from parliament, to hear Liz Truss confirmed as the Tories’ next leader and Britain’s new prime minister.

At the center of it was Graham Brady, chairman of a powerful committee of backbench Conservative lawmakers, who presided over the Tories’ third change of leader since 2016.

Throughout the leadership campaign, Mr. Brady, an amiable party grandee from northern England, has acted as master of ceremonies, warming to a role that has become increasingly familiar.

In the first phase of the contest, when lawmakers had their say, he revealed the results of successive rounds of secret balloting that narrowed the field to two candidates, from which around 172,000 Conservative Party members made the ultimate decision.

This time, there was very little suspense.

Mr. Brady thanked party staff members, colleagues and the two rivals who, he said, had showed themselves “to be outstanding candidates to be leader of our party.”

After he read out the result that almost everyone expected — albeit with a victory more modest than some had predicted — it was time for Ms. Truss to make her first comments as party leader.

Greeted with a standing ovation, Ms. Truss praised her predecessor, Boris Johnson, and emphasized that she would govern as a true Conservative. A few minutes later she had left, and background music once again echoed around the hall.

As news broke on Monday that Liz Truss would be Britain’s new prime minister, just about everyone at one London soup kitchen was too busy to listen to the announcement.

The only thing on anyone’s mind at the Brixton Soup Kitchen, in the southern part of Britain’s capital, was where their next meal would come from.

“Never heard of her,” said David Edwards, 62, as he tucked into a small plate of bread, fried plantains and baked beans. Mr. Edwards said that he can no longer afford to buy groceries because of skyrocketing energy and food costs.

“See this here,” he said, pointing to the trunk of the car that was serving as the soup kitchen’s temporary home. He and others gathered around the car in the rain, waiting for what for some might be the only meal of the day.

“Without them I’d be helpless,” Mr. Edwards added.

Located in the poorest area of one of London’s most deprived boroughs, the soup kitchen lies on the front line of Britain’s mounting cost-of-living crisis.

Although middle-class Conservative Party members in London and its surroundings had a disproportionate role in selecting the prime minister on Monday, the struggles in this section of the capital were a world away from many of those party members’ daily lives.

“Let’s invite Liz Truss down here so she can see what it’s really like,” said Rebecca Carnegie, one of the volunteers at the soup kitchen, which also provides other support for low-income residents. “We’re still going to be here every day. It doesn’t matter who the prime minister is.”

Solomon Smith, who runs the soup kitchen, said people have lost faith in the government.

“Families can’t even afford clothes and food for their kids,” he said, adding that a recent back-to-school drive had attracted 800 families who were no longer able to afford basic items like school uniforms, book bags and pens.

“It shouldn't be like this in the U.K.,” said Mr. Smith, who was dismissive that a new prime minister could make a difference. “These people have only one thing on their mind right now: do I put food on my table or electricity in my house?”

It may come as a surprise, particularly to those less familiar with parliamentary systems of government, that the decision on Britain’s new leader has been made by just a small (and not very representative) fraction of the country’s 67 million people.

Around 160,000 people had the final say in choosing the new leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore the next prime minister. Here’s what to know about those people, how the process played out and what happens next.

How did the leadership vote work?

Since Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned while his party still holds an overall majority in Parliament, the Conservatives could decide on his successor through a party leadership contest.

The initial stages of a Conservative leadership race take place among the party’s members of Parliament, from whom all the potential candidates are drawn. Each needed the nomination of 20 fellow lawmakers to reach the first ballot in July, a threshold met by eight of the 11 who sought to run.

Then Conservative lawmakers, through five rounds of voting, narrowed the candidates to two: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. After that, it was up to the rest of the party’s dues-paying members to decide.

At the time of the last leadership election in 2019, 154,500 party members were eligible to vote. Now that number is estimated to be more than 160,000 — still less than 0.3 percent of Britain’s population. Party members pay an annual subscription of 25 pounds, about $30, and have been voting by mail and online since early August. Voting closed at 5 p.m. on Friday.

Who got a say?

The Conservative Party does not release clear data on the makeup of its membership — even the number of members is not routinely published. But surveys offer a glimpse into just how unrepresentative those voting for this leader are of the broader population.

According to extensive demographic research from Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London, published in 2018, while members of all major parties in Britain are more likely than the average person to be male, older, middle-class and white, Conservative Party members skewed even more in that direction.

At the time of the research, an overwhelming majority were male (71 percent) and white (97 percent). About 44 percent were over 65. They also disproportionately represented one pocket of the country, with 54 percent living in London and the southeast of England, although this is in line with the other major British parties.

What happens next?

For the duration of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year-reign, the monarch has held an audience with her incoming prime minister at Buckingham Palace, her primary residence in central London.

But this time around, the queen, now 96, will be met with both the outgoing and the incoming prime minister at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she is on her annual summer trip. This is the 15th prime minister of her long reign.

Typically, the departing prime minister would make a statement outside Downing Street and then take a final trip as leader to meet the queen and be formally dismissed from the role. The newly elected leader would then meet the queen before returning to 10 Downing Street and make a speech.

Instead, on Tuesday morning, Mr. Johnson will make a speech at Downing Street before traveling by plane to Balmoral to see the queen around midday. Directly after that meeting, the new leader will meet with the queen there and become prime minister, before returning to London to make a speech.

On the world stage, Britain’s incoming prime minister, Liz Truss, is best known for taking a hard line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Putin must lose in Ukraine,” she said in March in Lithuania, using language that went beyond that of the United States and other Western allies. She has announced sanctions against hundreds of Russian companies and individuals, including relatives of Mr. Putin.

Ms. Truss, whom Britain’s Conservative Party selected on Monday as its leader, making her the country’s next prime minister, is expected to double down on Britain’s support for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, with further sanctions and more weapons for the Ukrainian army. She has promised to increase Britain’s spending on defense to 3 percent of its gross domestic product by the end of the decade.

Britain’s relations with the European Union, scratchy ever since Brexit, could become even more turbulent under Ms. Truss. She has promised to push through legislation that would upend trading arrangements in Northern Ireland, which remains part of the European single market. Officials in Brussels have reacted angrily, stoking fears of a trade war between Britain and the European Union.

The dispute could spill over into trans-Atlantic relations. The Biden administration is worried that a clash over trade in Northern Ireland could threaten 25 years of peace since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

On Monday, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, offered a conciliatory message of congratulations to Ms. Truss, describing the European Union and Britain as “partners.”

“We face many challenges together, from climate change to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Ms. von der Leyen tweeted. “I look forward to a constructive relationship, in full respect of our agreements.”

The Conservative Party leadership race will be remembered as the most diverse in British history, a source of pride for an embattled party.

The winner, Liz Truss, becomes the third female prime minister in the country’s history. She prevailed over Rishi Sunak, a son of ethnic Indian immigrants who has presented himself as a proud product of Britain’s postwar multicultural society, who would have been Britain’s first prime minister of color.

Ms. Truss has made clear that she wishes to break away from comparisons to her female predecessors. She called attempts to liken her to Margaret Thatcher sexist and “frustrating” in a recent interview with the television network GB News.

Ms. Truss’ cabinet is also widely forecast to include people of diverse backgrounds in top positions. Kwasi Kwarteng, the current business secretary and the son of Ghanaian immigrants, is a front-runner to become chancellor of the Exchequer. James Cleverly, the education secretary, whose father is British and mother is from Sierra Leone, could become foreign secretary. Suella Braverman, the attorney general, whose parents immigrated from Kenya and Mauritius, is seen as a likely secretary for home affairs.

Such appointments would produce a government of striking ethnic diversity at its highest level, especially for Britain’s Conservative Party, whose membership still skews overwhelmingly white and male.

But critics say that the party’s effort to present itself as a beacon of an increasingly diverse Britain remains at odds with many of its policies.

As minister for women and equalities, a position she held alongside her role as foreign secretary, Ms. Truss at times alienated minority groups, especially with her stances on transgender issues. She opposed giving trans people the right to change their gender identification without undergoing medical checks, and excluded them from a proposed ban on so-called conversion therapy, the widely discredited practice aimed at altering a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Mr. Sunak drew criticism for being out of touch with increasingly struggling Britons, in part because of his enormous personal wealth (he once showed up for a campaign event at a construction site wearing Prada loafers).

Both candidates have consistently voted in favor of the hard-line immigration policies that marked the tenure of the departing prime minister, Boris Johnson. During the campaign, Ms. Truss and Mr. Sunak said they would continue with a policy to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda, despite legal challenges including from the European Court of Human Rights.

Halima Begum, the chief executive of Runnymede Trust, a think tank that focuses on issues of race and equality, said that the Conservatives’ diverse political roster had not significantly improved its support among nonwhite voters. In the 2019 general election, she noted, only about 20 percent of Black and ethnic minority voters backed Conservative candidates.

The opposition Labour Party continues to enjoy stronger support among voters who belong to Britain’s minority groups, even though it has never elected a leader who wasn’t a white man.

“Arguably, the policies of the Conservative Party do not resonate with the majority of the U.K.’s Black and minority ethnic electorate,” Ms. Begum said.

“We need someone who serves all our communities,” she went on, “not just the ones that put them in office.”

As a result, many Britons are wary of labeling Ms. Truss’s victory as the sort of groundbreaking moment that some Conservative commentators are attempting to describe it as.

“Real equality goes much deeper than this,” said Jemima Olchawski, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, a British charity that campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights.

“Simply having a woman in the top job isn’t enough,” she added.

In the end, one could say the contest to become the new leader of the Conservative Party and Britain’s next prime minister partly came down to the puss* bow vs. Prada.

There was much hand-wringing in July over the choice made by Rishi Sunak, once considered a rising star, to wear expensive soft Italian loafers and slick, tailored suits. These presented a stark contrast to the high-street earrings and wardrobe of his rival, Liz Truss. (Message: Hey, forget the fashion! It’s the policies that matter.) What the candidates wore came to symbolize the differences between the two as much as anything they said on the campaign trail.

It’s not the actual garments that were so important, however. It’s that in the contemporary whirl of politics, where images go viral faster than any debate or stump speech, clothes become a shorthand for character. Through what politicians wear, we think we know them. We definitely judge them.

So it played out: On the one hand, the hip new-style politician (a.k.a. Mr. Sunak), with his costly, new-style suits by Henry Herbert cropped high on the ankle, his sustainably minded Silicon Valley-esque Everlane sweatshirt; on the other, the familiar model (a.k.a. Ms. Truss), with her Thatcherite wardrobe of floppy bow blouses and sensible pumps, and her Thatcher-lite policies.

Mr. Sunak’s use of a tailor telegraphed his considerable personal wealth, and — with the U.K. facing a cost-of-living crisis — saw him labeled “out of touch” with the common man (or the common Conservative Party member, whose votes were the ones that counted). Ms. Truss’s calculated support of British middlebrow brands at least suggested she was shopping as many of the party’s wider supporters might be.

And though Ms. Truss was insistent that she wasn’t dressing to mimic Margaret Thatcher (at least not on purpose), and Mr. Sunak tried to change the narrative by showing up at a leadership event in early August with a visible hole in the bottom of his shoe, over the almost two months of campaigning, the earlier images and their associated archetypes worked their way into the national psyche with striking speed.

With Ms. Truss widely expected to win, it appears it was no contest.