Liz Truss to succeed Johnson in Downing Street after winning the Tory primaries

“I have campaigned as a Conservative and I will govern as a Conservative,” she proclaims

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has emerged as the winner of the primaries held within the Conservative Party to choose the replacement for its current leader, Boris Johnson, and will therefore become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Truss has won in the final vote –open to all militancy and which concluded on Friday– the former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak by a wide lead: he has won 81,326 votes, compared to 60,399 obtained by his direct rival.

Following confirmation of her victory, Truss will formally become prime minister on Tuesday, when she travels to Balmoral to meet Queen Elizabeth II. The process of renewal announced by Johnson in his July 7 resignation speech will then be completed.

As soon as the results were known, Truss has taken the podium to advance some of his major policy lines, which include tax cuts or changes on energy. “I campaigned as a conservative and I will govern as a conservative,” he stressed.

The new leader has appealed to the unity of the party and has promised to work to obtain “a great victory” in the elections of 2024. The ‘Tories’ now have an absolute majority in the House of Commons, but polls of voting intentions put Labour ahead.

Truss has included among the thanks of his first speech to his “friend” Boris Johnson, from whom he has not dissociated himself in recent months despite the scandals. He recalled some of his successes, among which he cited the Brexit, the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 or the political pulse to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

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