Britain voted for Liz Truss as their next prime minister, with Truss elected the successor of Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party.
Truss was declared the winner of the Conservative Party leadership election, as she received 81,326 votes, defeating Rishi Sunak, who received 60,399 votes.
The result was announced at 1 pm (5:30 pm IST) after Foreign Minister Truss and her rival candidate, and former Finance Minister, Sunak, rallied hard to gain the trust of party members who cast the final vote.
Truss, if appointed, as she is expected to be next week, will become the Conservatives’ fourth prime minister in the last seven years. She was consistently leading Sunak in the early polls, as an estimated 200,000 Tory members voted.
The next UK PM is set to be saddled with an unenviable ‘in-tray’ with a nation reeling from a ‘cost-of-living’ crisis due to rising inflation, pegged at just over 10 per cent.
Boris Johnson announced his resignation in July after months of scandal and is expected to meet Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday to officially resign. His successor will follow him and be asked to form a government by the Queen.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph on the eve of the announcement, Truss had pledged to tackling Britain’s receding economy.