Who is Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister of Britain

By Team Newsable | First Published Sep 5, 2022, 5:22 PM IST

Liz Truss had been the front-runner and promised to act quickly to tackle Britain's cost of living crisis, adding that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills. Her platform of cutting taxes if elected, as the UK goes through a record inflation period, has also resonated with her party members.

Liz Truss has been picked to replace former Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party, marking the end of a bitter summer campaigning and the peak of a political career marked by a rapid climb through the upper echelons of British politics and dramatic changes of opinion

For the past few weeks, Truss had been the front-runner and promised to act quickly to tackle Britain's cost of living crisis, adding that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills. Her platform of cutting taxes if elected, as the UK goes through a record inflation period, has also resonated with her party members.

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Also read: Liz Truss defeats Rishi Sunak to be the next UK Prime Minister

Truss, the 46-year-old leader, hails from north of England, a region that is traditionally a stronghold of the opposition Labour Party. The Oxford native herself identified as a Social Democrat, an affiliation close to Centrist policies, earlier.

Elizabeth Truss read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. From there on she became more inclined towards Conservative ideals of reduced role of the government, and greater role of the private sector in the economy. She worked in the energy and telecommunications industry for 10 years as a commercial manager, among other jobs in the private sector.

Also read: 'See you Monday': Rishi Sunak signs off UK PM campaign with an optimistic tweet

Truss has been declared the winner of the Conservative Party leadership election with 81,326 votes, defeating Rishi Sunak, who received 60,399 votes.

The voting by Tory members for their choice between Sunak and Truss which started early August closed on Friday evening.

Nearly 52 per cent said that Truss would make a "poor" or "terrible" prime minister, while 43 per cent said they did not trust her "at all" to deal with the issues of the expensive cost of living. A further 37 per cent of Britons believe she will be much the same as her predecessor.

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