Conservative Liz Truss vowed to lead the UK out of the economic “storm” as she became Britain’s new prime minister on Tuesday, ending Boris Johnson’s controversial three-year term.
“As strong as this storm is, I know that the British people are stronger. Together we can overcome the storm,” he said in a brief speech in front of the famous door of number 10 Downing Street.
He marked the economy, public health and the energy crisis as his three priorities and assured that he will take “action this week to address energy bills”, whose shot suffocates the British.
Shortly after, Downing Street announced the first ministerial appointments, with people from minorities, but above all identified with their ultra-liberal and conservative positions, in the main positions.
Fighting inflation will be in the hands of Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, 47, the son of Ghanaian immigrants who came to the UK in the 1960s.
The foreign portfolio went to James Cleverly, a staunch supporter of Brexit, 53, whose mother is from Sierra Leone.
And the Ministry of the Interior was entrusted to Suella Braverman, a 42-year-old former lawyer, who will be in charge of the sensitive file of the irregular immigrants that the government wants to expel to Rwanda. He succeeds Truss herself.
Audience with the queen
Truss, 47, was named the winner on Monday in the internal election for leading the Conservative Party, against former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, a 42-year-old former banker billionaire grandson of Indian immigrants.
On Tuesday, she was received by Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle, the royal summer residence in Scotland, where she was commissioned to form a government as the new majority leader.
Third woman at the head of the British executive, after Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and Theresa May (2016-2019), Truss represents the most right-wing wing of the Conservative Party and campaigned with the promise of lowering taxes to boost a British economy by brink of recession.
Johnson’s goodbye
The transfer of power usually takes place in Buckingham, in central London, less than 10 minutes by car from Downing Street. But this year, due to the 96-year-old queen’s mobility problems, Truss and her predecessor had to travel more than 500 miles to Scotland.
Johnson officially tendered his resignation as prime minister there, “which Her Majesty had the graciously pleased to accept,” according to a statement from Buckingham Palace.
The controversial Conservative politician, 58, forced to resign in early July by his own MPs outraged by a multiplication of scandals, left Downing Street early this morning, delivering a speech at his gates to a crowd of supporters and relatives.
He took stock of his three years in office, recalling that in 2019 he achieved the most important conservative majority since 1987, with the promise of carrying out a Brexit that seemed impossible after years of political chaos.
From “the fastest distribution of vaccines in Europe” against covid-19, to the “early delivery of weapons to the Ukrainian forces” against the Russian invasion, through “unemployment at a minimum never seen since I was 10 years old”, He reviewed his achievements.
“I am like one of those booster rockets that has served its purpose and now I will gently re-enter the atmosphere” and “I will offer this government only my most fervent support,” he said.
Showdown in the House of Commons
On Wednesday Truss will preside over her first council of ministers and will have to face in the House of Commons the leader of the opposition, Labor Keir Starmer, who on Monday accused her of “not being on the side of working people”, suffocated by inflation of more than 10%.
British households will face an 80% rate cap increase on gas and electricity bills from October and many businesses and institutions, including hospitals and schools, have warned that they will have to cut back or even close due to the inability to pay. .
Elected in a vote open only to the 172,000 members of the Conservative Party, in a country of 67 million inhabitants, the polls showed that a large part of the British do not trust Truss’s ability to overcome the crisis.
