Truss has beaten former chancellor Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest to be chosen as the next Prime Minister, winning 81,326 votes compared to Sunak's 60,399 votes.
Upon winning the Tory leadership contest, Truss will visit the Queen in Balmoral who will formally ask her to form a Government.
Reports suggest that Truss has lined up a number of close allies for key cabinet roles including the current education secretary James Cleverly and Sir Iain Duncan Smith who quit as work and pensions secretary in 2016.
According to the national newspapers, Kemi Badenoch – who stood against Truss in the leadership contest – could be given the post of education secretary.
The new PM's policies
With regards to families and childcare, in July, Truss outlined plans, which sparked criticism, to give parents a tax break to make it easier for them to stay at home and care for their children.
It is unclear whether she will go ahead with proposals, currently out for consultation, on the relaxation of adult to child ratios in early years settings. However, it was Truss that originally floated the idea of reducing ratios in her role as children’s minister in 2013, only for the move to be blocked by the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was in a Coalition Government with the Conservative party.
Reports suggest Truss is also planning an energy bill ‘freeze’ within her first week of office. Other measures she has proposed include:
- Reversing the recent rise in National Insurance contributions.
- Paying for the ‘cuts’ by spreading the UK’s ‘Covid debt’ over a longer period.
- Not to bring in any new taxes.
Truss' career in politics
Elizabeth Truss has been the MP for South-West Norfolk since 2010.
Between 2012-to-2014, she served as childcare and education minister, publishing the ‘More Great Childcare’ report which outlined plans to raise the standard of childcare qualifications, set-up childminder agencies and give nurseries more flexibility over staff: child ratios.
In the 2014 Cabinet reshuffle she was appointed environment secretary, before being given the role of justice secretary in 2016, followed by chief secretary to the Treasury the following year and then foreign secretary last year under Boris Johnson’s Government. Since 2019, she has also held the role of minister for women and equalities.
