Liz Truss, the Conservative leader of the UK who succeeds Boris Johnson

The members of the Conservative Party have already chosen their leader and future Prime Minister. After the final ballot and with 57.4% of the votes, this time the post goes to the Conservative Liz Truss, who will officially occupy the post of Prime Minister when she travels to Balmoral Castle where Queen Elizabeth II will appoint her as head of government.

Truss has thus managed to beat the former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, who had so far managed to win all the elimination processes, falling with 42.6% of the votes. In this way, the Conservative Party member will become the third woman to hold the post, after Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher.  

With her appointment, the former Minister for Women and Equality and Foreign Affairs takes over from Boris Johnson, after the latter resigned following a series of controversies and internal crises. Truss will now have to deal with one of the most important economic crises the country is going through, framed, moreover, in a fragile foreign policy context.

In addition to relations with the European Union, Truss will have to tackle two of the issues that most concern British families: inflation, which has already reached 10%, and the recession that follows Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

For the moment, the new leader has become known for her defence of tax cuts and other neoliberal economic measures, although she has not specified what the first measures she will take to tackle the economic crisis will be.

What she did specify during her campaign was one of her "star" measures: to approve a package of 30,000 pounds sterling in tax cuts by the end of the month, using as an argument that the heavy tax burden that the UK is currently facing is behind "the slow growth" of the British country.

Moreover, if elected, Truss pledged to present an energy plan within a week at a time when the price of energy has risen 80% as a result of the war in Ukraine and the revival of the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, the general discontent of the population foresees an active winter in terms of strikes and social unrest. Several strikes have already been called in various sectors, such as the country's postal service, the railways and the Scottish refuse collectors, as a result of discontent over working conditions and low wages. 

Alongside this, the new head of government will have to deal with the threat of a new Scottish independence referendum, announced by the nationalist leader, Nicola Sturgeon, proposed for 19 October 2023. However, Truss has already announced that he will "never ever" allow "the British family to break up". 

Another major crisis the country is going through is in relation to its public health service, the National Health Service (NHS), following a growing lack of qualified healthcare staff in the service, as well as increasingly long waits for appointments, insufficient ambulances and an insufficient budget. 

Born and raised in a left-wing family, Truss went to public school in Leeds in the north of England. She went on to study for a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, during which time she became a prominent political activist, initially sympathetic to the Liberal Democrat Party, before switching to the Conservative Party and openly opposing the British monarchy.

In the 2001 election she made her first unsuccessful attempt to become a member of the House of Commons, losing both her first and second attempts. It was not until 2006 that she succeeded in gaining public office as a Greenwich councillor.

Then in 2010, David Cameron backed her profile as a candidate for a Tory seat.  Two years later, she was appointed Minister for Education and in 2014 she became Minister for the Environment, before taking on the portfolios of Equalities and Foreign Affairs.