Liz Truss named new UK prime minister, taking over after Boris Johnson was forced from office by scandal

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Liz Truss has been named the next prime minister of the UK, winning the internal Conservative Party contest to succeed Boris Johnson.

Truss beat her rival Rishi Sunak in a five-week campaign that was at times fiery and laid bare deep divisions among MPs and ministers. 

Graham Brady, chairman of the party’s backbench 1922 committee, named Truss the winner at an event in Westminster, central London, on Monday. 

Truss won with 81, 386 votes from Conservative members, compared with 63,099 for Sunak, Brady said. Those figures mean Truss got 56.3% of the vote to Sunak’s 43.7%.

In a speech delivered at the announcement, Truss thanks “my friend” Johnson, who she said was admired “from Kyiv to Carlisle”, a nod to his support in Ukraine where he has pledged extensive support against Russia.

She pledged to enact an agenda quickly, saying: “We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver – and we will deliver a great victory for the Conservatives in 2024.”

Johnson is due to deliver a farewell speech on the steps of Number 10 on Tuesday, before leaving Downing Street to meet the Queen at Balmoral castle in the Scottish highlands to formally resign.

He announced the end to his time in office around two months ago. It came after a mounting series of scandals, and mass resignations from his government, prompted him to say he would leave.

Truss is due to follow Johnson to Scotland on Tuesday , where she will become prime minister in a meeting with the Queen, when the monarch formally asks her to form and lead a government.

It is the first time the Queen has conducted such a handover outside of London, continuing a trend of the 96-year-old monarch limiting her movements as she ages.

Truss is due to give her first speech as prime minister on Tuesday afternoon, and is then expected to begin putting her Cabinet together.

Allies including Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey and Foreign Office minister James Cleverly are all likely to be given promotions,according to the well-connected Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman.

During the campaign, Truss pledged an emergency budget within a month that would include £30 billion of tax cuts, including a reversal of the National Insurance rise meant to help fund healthcare in the UK in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Truss signalled on Sunday that she would act on the looming energy crisis – with a report in The Daily Telegraph suggesting she may freeze bills with public money. 

However, Truss – who has championed tax cuts as the best way to stimulate growth – also said she would take many actions to deal with the worsening economic picture and that “not all those decisions will be popular”.