Liz Truss was The New UK Prime Minister 2022
UK Prime Minister Election Results: Liz Truss beat her rival, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, by 81,326 votes to 60,399, after a summer-long internal contest sparked by Boris Johnson's resignation in July.
Liz Truss wins Conservative Party leadership election and will be the next UK prime minister
After a six-week-long gruelling campaign, Conservative Party leader Liz Truss beat Rishi Sunak to emerge Boris Johnson's successor in the UK prime ministerial elections. She becomes the third female prime minister of UK, beating Sunak by over 20,000 votes.
The winner of the contest was announced on Monday by Sir Graham Brady—chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs and returning officer of the leadership election.
Britain’s new prime minister was not voted in by the British voters, but by 1.6 lakh Conservative Party members constituting barely 0.3 per cent of the British electorate, and living predominantly in the Brexit heartlands in the south of England.
On the policy side, Truss and her rival Sunak held convergent positions on a lot of issues. No matter who wins, Britain’s policies on Brexit, the European Union, Northern Ireland and the Ukraine war would broadly remain the same. The difference was in the tone. Sunak was measured, while Truss was hawkish, projecting herself as a right-wing, radical Conservative, harsh with the EU, hard with Putin, tough with China, but gung-ho on NATO.
As Conservatives, both Truss and Sunak support small government, big business and low taxes. The crucial difference is on tax. Sunak plans to cut taxes after inflation is controlled. Truss pandered to the Brexiteers’ all-time top priority—embedding a low-tax regime and deregulating and hike defence expenditure.
Truzz's entry into politics
Truss entered the House of Commons in 2010 representing the rural South West Norfolk seat.
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Just over four years after becoming an MP, Truss was inducted into the cabinet in 2014. After then PM David Cameron’s exit following the Brexit referendum fiasco, the newly ascendant Theresa May named her lord chancellor.Truss was the first woman in the history of the UK to head the justice ministry. But after a disastrous stint, May demoted her as number two in the treasury, a move which prompted observers to pen her political obituary. However, Truss’s uncanny knack of backing the winner ensured that when Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019, she was back in the cabinet as international trade secretary. Her high-voltage performance was rewarded with a promotion to the foreign office last September after Dominic Raab was shunted out for his disastrous handling of Afghanistan.
Truss’s transformation perhaps started with Brexit. An original “remainer”, she even wrote an op-ed in The Sun arguing that leaving the European Union would be a triple tragedy involving more rules, more forms and more delays. But once Brexit was confirmed, Truss made a quick u-turn and clarified that she opposed Brexit only out of loyalty towards Cameron.
As foreign secretary, Truss gave Johnson complete support in shaping Britain’s aggressive response towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She hinted that the UK supported pushing Russia out of not just territories captured recently, but also from Crimea. She openly backed British citizens fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. She was also successful in securing the release of two British citizens imprisoned in Iran for the past six years.
Later on Tuesday afternoon, the newly appointed prime minister will arrive back at Downing Street to make her inaugural speech before getting on with the task of announcing key cabinet posts. Essential security briefings and handing over of nuclear codes are expected to also take place during the course of the day by senior officials. On Wednesday at 12 noon (GMT), Truss will address her first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons.
Liz Truss (Mary Elizabeth Truss) Biography :
She was born 26 July 1975) is a British politician who is the newly-elected Leader of the Conservative Party and is expected to be appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 6 September 2022. She has served as the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs since 2021 and Minister for Women and Equalities since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, Truss has been Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010. She has served in various Cabinet positions under Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
Truss attended Merton College, Oxford, and was President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats. In 1996, she graduated and joined the Conservative Party. She worked at Shell and Cable & Wireless, and was deputy director of the think tank Reform. Truss was elected for South West Norfolk at the 2010 general election. As a backbencher, she called for reform in several policy areas including childcare, mathematics education and the economy. She founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and wrote or co-wrote a number of papers and books, including After the Coalition (2011) and Britannia Unchained (2012).
Truss served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education from 2012 to 2014, before being appointed to the Cabinet by Cameron as Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the 2014 cabinet reshuffle. Though she was a supporter of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum, she supported Brexit after the result. After Cameron resigned in July 2016, Truss was appointed Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor by May, becoming the first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the office. She was criticised for failing to defend judges. Following the 2017 general election, Truss was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. After May resigned in 2019, Truss supported Johnson's bid to become Conservative leader. He appointed Truss as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. She took on the additional role of Minister for Women and Equalities in September 2019. She was promoted to Foreign Secretary by Johnson in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle. She was appointed the Government's chief negotiator with the European Union and UK chair of the EU–UK Partnership Council in December 2021. Following Johnson's resignation, Truss won the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.