Lizz Truss

  • Wins the race against Rishi Sunak

By Sangeeta Saxena

New Delhi. 05 September 2022. Will it be Truss or Sunak at 10 Downing Street ? The next prime minister will be either current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak. The doubt is clear and the suspense over. Mary Elizabeth Truss will be the 15th British Prime Minister Queen Elizabeth II will swear in and the third woman Prime Minister of Britain.

From Robert Walpole to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of UK and the election for the chosen one have been the biggest stories and the position one of the strongest in the world. And today this is no different. All eyes were on the British Prime Minister’s residence, as Sir Graham Brady chair of the 1922 Committee of Backbench Tory MPs and returning officer of the leadership election  announced at the house full of Conservatives that  Elizabeth Truss  is going to be the next person in the country’s cockpit. She won with 81,326 votes to 60,399.

The status and executive powers of the British prime minister means that the incumbent is consistently ranked as one of the most powerful democratically elected leaders in the world. It was Liz Truss vs Rishi Sunak this time. The most  interesting and globally watched decision, as  Sunak is not only a British of Indian origin but also the son-in-law of one of the most famous couples in India, Narayan & Sudha Murthy the founders of the Indian IT giant Infosys. 

The leadership election became mandatory when current Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he would be resigning on July 7 after many ministers and members of Parliament resigned, voicing a lack of confidence in their party leader. Johnson has stayed on as caretaker PM while the party decided between the candidates. He has not yet formally resigned from office. He will have to an audience with Queen Elizabeth II the British Monarch to officially inform her that he is resigning and the next incumbent chosen by the ruling party where around 180,000 people by the most recent count who pay to be a member of the party, out of the 65 million people living in the U.K. voted via a postal ballot which closed on Sept. 2.

Now that the most popular candidate is announced by , the formal process for appointing a prime minister begins. The new incumbent will have to travel to Balmoral Castle in Scotland for the official “kissing of hands” meeting with the queen, where the monarch asks for a new administration to be formed. For the first time the Queen will appoint her prime minister  away from Buckingham Palace.

Mary Elizabeth Truss , born 26 July 1975, is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs since 2021 and Minister for Women and Equalities since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, she has been Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010. She has served in various Cabinet positions under Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Truss will now be the  Leader of the Conservative Party.

On the other hand Rishi Sunak, born 12 May 1980 is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022, having previously been the Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond Yorkshire since 2015.  He  dismissed factors such as gender or ethnicity would play a part in Tory members’ postal ballots.

Had he been elected, 42-year-old Sunak would have  gone on to make history as the first Prime Minister of the UK of Indian origin whose Indian grandmother migrated to Britain over 60 years ago from East Africa.

Liz Truss had decided not to resign from Cabinet when Boris Johnson’s government fell,  thereby making her a loyal person.