Liz Truss wins Tory leadership race to be next Prime Minister

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Liz Truss has won the Tory leadership and is set to become the UK’s next Prime Minister after a contest that left the Conservative Party bitterly divided and the country without political direction going into a winter fuel crisis.Truss won 57 per cent of the party with 81,326 votes compared to Rishi Sunak’s 60,399 votes.

But with less than 60 per cent of support, Truss now faces a divided parliamentary party and membership.The Foreign Secretary had been widely tipped to win the Conservative leadership against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.

She will be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen at a ceremony in Scotland on Tuesday. Truss has made tax cuts and the reversal of Sunak’s national insurance rise a priority for her government.But she has so far refused to say what kind of support package she will deliver to counter soaring energy bills and a cost-of-living crisis that could leave many destitute.Truss, 47, will be the third Conservative Prime Minister since 2016, when David Cameron quit after losing the Brexit vote.

She will take control of a party deeply split over her tax-cutting agenda and sullied by three scandal-ridden years of Boris Johnson at Downing Street.As well as dealing with a cost of living emergency, the new Prime Minister has to face down Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, tackle soaring inflation and demands from the SNP government for a second Scottish independence referendum.Voting closed last Friday in the eight-week contest saw a total of 12 official hustings events, with Sunak and Truss touring the country.The process turned into a summer-long slanging match of the previous decade of Tory rule with Truss offering Conservative members the 'red meat' of tax cuts and Sunak