10, Downing Street: Liz Truss named next occupant as the British PM
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Brexit crusader Boris Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, the next British Prime Minister, has her immediate tasks ready: to control inflation, pacify industrial protesters, and find a way around an aggressive Russia’s attempts to undermine Europe’s polity and economy by turning off the supply of petroleum and gas to the Continent next door.
On Monday, Britain named her as the next PM after she won a leadership race for the governing Conservative party when the country faces a cost-of-living crisis, industrial unrest, and a recession.
After several weeks of acrimonious leadership contest that saw Truss, 47, face off against Indian-Briton former finance minister Rishi Sunak, she emerged on top in a vote of Conservative Party members on Monday, the media reports said.
Her election to lead Britain has kicked off the process for the handover from her predecessor Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign in July after months of scandal saw support for his administration plummet.
Johnson will meet Queen Elizabeth in Scotland on Tuesday to officially resign. As the new PM, Truss will follow him as the Queen would ask her to form a government.
Truss will be the Conservatives’ fourth PM since a 2015 election. In the last seven years, Britain has suffered several crises, capped by the latest forecast of a long recession triggered by sky-rocketing inflation, which hit 10.1 percent in July.
Truss, who was Foreign Minister under Johnson, promised to lower taxes and boost economic growth.
“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply,” she said after the result.
Truss, who was the Foreign minister under Johnson, promised to act quickly to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis. Within a week, she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and secure future fuel supplies.
During her leadership campaign, she promised to challenge convention by scrapping tax increases and cutting other levies in a move some economists say would fuel inflation.
That, plus a pledge to review the remit of the Bank of England while protecting its independence, has prompted some investors to dump the pound and government bonds, the media reported.
Kwasi Kwarteng, widely tipped to be her finance minister, sought to calm markets by saying that under Truss, there would need to be “some fiscal loosening” but that her administration would act in “a fiscally responsible way.”
Truss faces a series of difficult choices ahead, which opposition lawmakers say results from 12 years of the poor Conservative government. She has also opposed the call for an early election.
Reports said she will appoint a strong cabinet and will have to work hard to win over the pro-Sunak lawmakers in her party.
First, she will have to face the urgent issue of surging energy prices. Average annual household utility bills are set to jump by 80 percent in October to 3,549 pounds before an expected rise to 6,000 pounds in 2023, decimating personal finances.
Britain has lagged other major European countries in offering support for consumer energy bills, which opposition lawmakers blame on a “zombie” government unable to act while the Conservatives ran their leadership contest.
In May, the government set out a 15 billion-pound support package to help households with energy bills as part of its 37 billion-pound cost-of-living support scheme.
