Queen Elizabeth II greeted Liz Truss on Tuesday during an audience in Balmoral, Scotland, where the monarch invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become prime minister and form a new government.
Jane Barlow / Pool photo via AP
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Jane Barlow / Pool photo via AP
Queen Elizabeth II greeted Liz Truss on Tuesday during an audience in Balmoral, Scotland, where the monarch invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become prime minister and form a new government.
Jane Barlow / Pool photo via AP
LONDON – Liz . Truss Become Prime Minister of Great Britain Tuesday and immediately face enormous tasks ahead amid growing pressure to rein in soaring prices, ease labor unrest and fix a broken health care system. burdened by long waiting lists and staff shortages.
At the top of her inbox is energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which threatens to drive energy bills to unsustainable levels, close businesses and leave the nation’s poorest people shivering in frozen homes this winter.
Truss, who refused to lay out his energy strategy during a two-month campaign to success Boris Johnson, which now plans to cap energy bills at a cost to taxpayers of up to £100 billion ($116 billion), British media reported on Tuesday. She is expected to reveal her plans on Thursday.
Rebecca Macdougal, 55, who works in law enforcement outside the Houses of Parliament, said: “You have to know about the cost of living crisis in the UK, which is actually pretty bad at the moment.
“She’s promising about it, because she says she’s going to deliver, deliver, deliver. But we’ll see, hopefully in the next couple of weeks there will be some announcements that will help those who are. work as usual.”
Truss, 47, took office on Tuesday afternoon at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, when Queen Elizabeth II formally asked her to form a new government in a carefully choreographed ceremony following centuries of tradition. Johnson, who announced his intention to step down two months ago, officially resigned during an audience with the queen a short time before.
It is the first time in the queen’s 70-year reign that the transfer of power has taken place at Balmoral, instead of Buckingham Palace in London. The ceremony has been moved to Scotland to provide scheduling certainty, as the 96-year-old queen has run into issues around her that have forced palace officials to make decisions about her daily trip.
Truss became prime minister a day after the ruling Conservative Party chose her as leader in an election in which the party’s 172,000 due-members were the sole constituency. As party leader, Truss automatically became prime minister without a general election because the Conservatives still have a majority in the House of Commons.
But as the national leader chosen by less than 0.5% of Britons, Truss is under pressure to deliver results quickly.
Ed Davey, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, on Tuesday called for an early election in October – something Truss and the Conservatives are very unlikely to do because the Tories are slipping in the elections. survey.
“I listened to Liz Truss during his time leading the Tory (campaign) and I was looking for a plan to help people deal with their skyrocketing energy bills, with the NHS crisis etc and I didn’t hear any plans,” he told the BBC. “Since people are really worried, because people are losing sleep over their energy bills, businesses aren’t investing because of the crisis, I think that’s really wrong.”
Johnson took note of the tensions facing Britain as he left the prime minister’s residence for the last time at 10 Downing Street, saying his policies have given the government the economic power to help people get through. through the energy crisis.
Always colorful, he hides his bitterness when forced out thinly.
“I was like one of those boosters that had done its job,” Johnson said. “Now I will gently re-enter the atmosphere and shoot down invisibly at some remote and hidden corner of the Pacific Ocean.”
Many observers expect Johnson to try to get back into politics, although he is baffled about his plans. Instead, the man who studied classics at Oxford University supported Truss and compared himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator who renounced power and returned to his farm to live in peace.
“Like Cincinnatus, I’m getting back to my plow,” he said.
Johnson, 58, became prime minister three years ago after his predecessor, Theresa May, failed to get Britain out of the European Union. Johnson then won a majority of 80 seats in Parliament on the promise of “getting Brexit done.”
However, he was forced out of office by a series of scandals that culminated in the resignation of dozens of Cabinet secretaries and junior officials in early July. That paved the way for Truss, a one-time accountant who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.
Many in the UK are still learning about their new leader.
Unlike Johnson, who became a media celebrity long before he became prime minister, Truss quietly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party before she was appointed Foreign Secretary, one of several top of the Cabinet, just a year ago.
She is scheduled to give her first speech as prime minister on Tuesday afternoon outside 10 Downing Street.
Truss is under pressure to explain how she plans to help consumers pay their household energy bills that are set to rise to an average of £3,500 ($4,000) a year – three times more than spending fees from a year ago – on October 1st unless she intervenes.
Rising food and energy prices, driven by the invasion of Ukraine and the aftershocks of COVID-19 and Brexit, have pushed UK inflation above 10% for the first time in four decades. The Bank of England forecasts it will hit 13.3% in October and the UK will slip into a prolonged recession by the end of the year.
Ship drivers, port workers, garbage collectors, postal workers and lawyers have all organized strikes to demand higher wages to keep up with inflation and millions of others, from teachers to nurses, could be gone in the next few months.
Truss, a conservative in small, low-tax government who admires Margaret Thatcher, says her priorities are to cut taxes and cut regulations to spur economic growth. Critics argue that would raise inflation while failing to resolve the cost-of-living crisis. Uncertainty has rattled currency markets, sending sterling below $1.14 on Monday, its weakest since the 1980s.
In theory, Truss has time to make her mark: She doesn’t need to call a national election until the end of 2024. But opinion polls have yielded the opposition Labor Party. The main lead is stable, and the worse the economy gets, the more pressure will increase. grow up.
In addition to Britain’s domestic troubles, Truss and her new Cabinet will also face numerous foreign policy crises, including the war in Ukraine and post-Brexit frosty relations with the EU.
Truss, as Secretary of State, was a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia. She said her first phone conversation with a world leader would be with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Truss has also pledged to increase Britain’s defense spending to 3% of gross domestic product from just over 2% – another expensive promise.
But she is likely to have much cooler conversations with EU leaders, who have been annoyed by her uncompromising stance as foreign secretary in negotiations over rules. trade standoff over Northern Ireland, an unresolved Brexit issue has worsened relations between London and Brussels. With the UK threatening to breach a legally binding divorce treaty and the EU launching legal action in response, the dispute could escalate into a trade war.
“I think she has a big, challenging job ahead of her,” said Robert Conway, 71, an electronics manufacturer in London. a challenging job. “
