On Sept. 5, Conservative Party member Liz Truss was elected the United Kingdom’s new Prime minister, replacing Boris Johnson, who resigned in July amid multiple scandals. She is Britain’s third female premier, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher and Teresa May.
Truss defeated former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in the contest among party members, winning by about 21,000 votes; Truss gained 57% of the vote, and Sunak received 43%. This win was smaller than expected, as she had been the frontrunner for most of this race.
“Thank you to everyone who voted for me in this campaign,” Sunak wrote on Twitter. “I’ve said throughout that the Conservatives are one family. It’s right we now unite behind the new PM, Liz Truss, as she steers the country through difficult times.”
Throughout her campaign, Truss drew on her experience as Foreign Secretary to address various international issues, including the war in Ukraine. However, she mainly emphasized the importance of domestic policies, such as cutting taxes and other costs, while also creating economic growth.
“I’m confident that together we can ride out the storm, we can rebuild the economy and we can become the modern brilliant Britain that I know we can be,” she said.
However, Truss is inheriting a country rocked by social and economic turmoil. It has been plagued by rising energy, food and fuel costs, severely impacting average citizens—with the Bank of England predicting inflation to rise to 13% by the end of 2022.
In addition, there have been long waiting lists to receive hospital treatment, and Truss has promised to “…make sure that people can get doctors’ appointments and the NHS [National Health Service] services they need. We will put our health services on firm footing.”
As these crises coalesced, the British pound recently fell to its lowest level compared to the U.S. dollar since 1985, signaling that the economic woes of the U.K. will continue to worsen.
“What I will do is lay out a 10-year plan for public service reform and a 10-year plan to change Britain’s economic growth rate,” Truss said in an interview sharing her plans. “We should be growing on average at 2.5%.”
However, she has yet to introduce concrete strategies to achieve these goals.
Some Conservative members of Parliament are worried that Truss’ embrace of Thatcherism will serve as a detriment to the economy—especially as Sunak argued that if she were chosen as leader, her tax policies would create the risk of a prolonged recession. However, Truss’ smaller margin of victory may compel her to adopt a less aggressive approach to tackling the economy.
Truss remains optimistic about the future of the U.K. and her party, whose long political career began in 1994 with her emergence as a Liberal Democrat at Oxford University in which she called for the end of the monarchy at a public conference. A few years later, Truss joined the Conservative Party, which shaped her ideals and outlook to become the new Prime Minister.
“Because, my friends, I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, and we will deliver. And we will deliver a great victory for the Conservative Party in 2024,” she said in her victory speech.
