Liz Truss to be next UK PM after winning party vote

Liz Truss was announced as the UK's next prime minister, after winning an internal leadership contest of the ruling Conservative party.

The foreign secretary beat her rival, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, by 81,326 votes to 60,399, after a summer-long internal contest sparked by Boris Johnson's resignation in July.

Truss, Britain’s 47-year-old foreign secretary, won the support of her party’s grass roots with promises of tax cuts and with her fealty to Johnson, who was booted from Downing Street by Conservative lawmakers but is already missed by rank-and-file party members.

She will travel to Scotland to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth II and then enter 10 Downing Street as the third woman to serve as British prime minister.

Truss is far less colourful, less verbose than her former backslapping boss — perhaps in a good way. Johnson was ousted by his lawmakers in his own party because he couldn’t, even when pressed, tell the whole truth during a string of scandals.

Truss wasn’t the top choice of Conservative Party lawmakers, and a majority of Britons tell pollsters she will be a “poor” or “terrible” prime minister, but she was the favourite among the Tory activists who selected the leader of their party and Britain in a vote announced.

At one point during the five-minute speech, Truss read in a monotone: “We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver” — to a smattering of applause by her party members. Commentators often declare her oratory “wooden.”