Liz Truss has been voted as successor to Boris Johnson and will be the new Prime Minister of the UK and also the 3rd female PM, following Johnson’s resignation on July 7th, 2022. She defeated Rishi Sunak, the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) after 2 months of the campaign.
Truss joined the contest with ten others, who were gradually reduced to 2 after Johnson resigned due to losing the trust of many of his allies.
This saw Johnson’s government engulfed in a number of scandals, ranging from the Party Gate Scandal to allegations of corruption after a WhatsApp message revealed he had solicited donations from a member of his party to fund the refurbishment of his Downing Street residence.
Truss’ plans
Truss has promised to deliver £30 billion in tax cuts through an emergency Budget later this month, arguing the UK’s tax burden is behind sluggish growth. She has pledged to deliver low-regulation investment zones and bring about the biggest increase in defence spending in decades. She also abandoned a plan to link public sector pay to local living costs, after a backlash from unions, Labour and some Tories.
To handle the energy price crisis in the UK, Truss had also promised to announce a plan to deal with soaring energy costs within a week, if elected, adding that further support would need to go “hand in hand” with a plan to boost domestic energy supplies, arguing that the UK had become too dependent on international energy prices.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s Business Secretary and Truss ally said her government will take immediate action if elected that “will help people with the challenges we face in the coming months, and lay the groundwork for the change we need in the long term. This means cutting taxes, putting money back into people’s pockets and unshackling our businesses from burdensome taxes and unsuitable regulation”.
Criticisms
Her plans if elected have also come with criticisms as Financial Times declared that the rising cost of government debt and Liz Truss’s promises of tax cuts and defence spending will blow a £60 billion hole in the public finances by the middle of the decade.
Labour Party also warned that her plans will push through a “huge stealth tax cut for banks”, Pat McFadden, shadow Treasury minister, says her cuts in corporation taxes to boost the UK’s economic growth will come at an estimated £17 billion cost to the exchequer, citing that scrapping Sunak’s corporation tax rise and keeping the 5 percentage point cut in the bank surcharge would be a big tax cut for big banks in the midst of an economic crisis.
About Liz Truss
Mary Elizabeth Truss was born in Oxford in 1975, she lives in London and Norfolk and was educated at Roundhay School in Leeds, Oxford University, After graduating she worked as an accountant for Shell, and Cable & Wireless.
Truss is married to an accountant Hugh O’Leary with two teenage daughters and represents the Parliamentary constituency of South West Norfolk.
Conservative leader David Cameron put Ms Truss on his “A-list” of priority candidates for the 2010 election and she was selected to stand for the safe seat of South West Norfolk. In 2012, she entered government as an education minister and in 2014 was promoted to the environment secretary, she was later named foreign secretary in 2021.
