Liz Truss was chosen as the new leader of the Conservative Party and the new prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The U.K.'s foreign minister beat the country's former finance minister to become the new leader. Over the last few weeks, members of the Conservative Party were asked to vote for their favorite candidate, with 81,326 of them voting for Truss.
Around half of the vote went to Truss while Sunak got 42% of the vote.
She mentioned Boris Johnson as her friend while thanking her supporters. She said she would push a "bold plan to cut taxes" and grow the British economy when she became a Conservative. She said she would deal with long-term issues of the country's energy supply. She told delegates that she was going to win the next election for the party.
The ritual dictates that the outgoing prime minister has to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II before she appoints the new prime minister.
As the queen is currently staying in her Scottish residence, that event will take place there rather than in Buckingham Palace in London.
Relations between the two politicians are good, despite the fact that Truss was one of the high-level ministers that remained loyal to Johnson in the final days of his leadership.
Johnson reluctantly announced on July 7 that he would step down as party leader but remained in office while his successor was chosen.
She is taking on the biggest challenge of her political career when she becomes prime minister, governing a fractious and divided political party and leading a country facing the biggest cost-of-living crisis in decades.
The cost-of-living crisis and imminent energy bill spike is likely to be Truss' priority and she will have to hit the ground running to deal with the immediate squeeze on Britons' pocketbooks.
Although she might not be able to fulfill her promise of helping struggling Brits within a week of taking office, she has ruled out energy rationing.
In order to pull the U.K. through a winter of crisis, economists say the package of measures needs to be very large.
Liz Truss will be forced to take more drastic action to prevent winter supply shortages once in power, according to a research note.
The energy package will cover questions like storage, raising production, and ensuring that the UK's Norway stream is secure, as well as being aimed at domestic consumers.
With little policy action undertaken so far, it seems likely that more significant steps will be required during the fall and winter, including non essential industries being ordered to temporarily shut down or, curtailments on public energy use in order to avoid the worst-case scenario.
The analysts said that there was only a 30% chance that the U.K. could get through the winter.
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