The new conservative leader will take charge this Tuesday of the head of the Government to face the price crisis
The Conservative Party has elected the current Foreign Minister, Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Truss, as the new leader of the organization. She will be confirmed tomorrow, Tuesday, as the new prime minister to replace Boris Johnson. The result of the vote of the party affiliates has been favorable to Truss and leaves out Rishi Sunak, the two survivors of the initial process of eliminating candidates.
For the first time, the party’s affiliates have opted for a candidate other than the preferences of the parliamentary group, which gave more votes to its rival, former Finance Minister Sunak, in the first phase of the electoral process. The accusation of disloyalty to Sunak after having resigned from Johnson’s cabinet at the start of the parliamentary group’s rebellion has weighed heavily on party members.
Two months after the resignation of Boris Johnson, on July 7, the executive power is restored. This Tuesday, Johnson will leave by plane for Scotland, to present his resignation to Elizabeth II. The mobility problems suffered by the monarch have prevented her from moving to her official residence, at Buckingham Palace, located in central London. For the first time in her reign, she will facilitate the change of head of government at her summer residence, Balmoral Manor near Aberdeen.
In another plane, Truss will follow Johnson en route to isolated Balmoral, to offer himself to the queen as an MP capable of forming a government with a majority in the House of Commons. After confirmation, he will return to London, enter the official residence of the heads of government, at 10 Downing Street, and read a declaration of intent, around 5:00 p.m.
He has had time in August to outline the cabinet. Johnson filled it with ‘Brexiters’ and leaves him a majority of 71 seats in the Commons. Some 200 MPs, out of 357 in the parliamentary group, have not backed Truss, who is less popular than Johnson with Conservative affiliates and voters. The polls give Labor an advantage of about ten points in the intention to vote. General elections must be held before January 24, 2025.
It’s a complicated picture in party politics for Truss, who has headed six ministries in her eight years of experience under the executives of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. She has a more divided parliamentary group than before, an opposition that for the first time maintains a substantial advantage and the lack of legitimacy that derives from having been chosen to lead the Government by a small number of voters.
strikes
In the country’s politics, the electoral campaign has been marked by the divergence between a minister in favor of amending the tax increases of her former colleague Sunak to avoid a recession and the latter’s criticism of his rival for favoring with his plan, supposedly, the inflationary dynamics; or for endangering the UK’s budgetary credibility, by adding more debt to that accumulated during the pandemic.
The increase in the price of energy, higher than that of all the economies of the European Union, with the exception of the three Baltic republics, broke out strongly in the last days of the campaign. Truss has been forced to promise public intervention, after arguing at the start of the campaign that her fiscal relaxation is a better way to facilitate the management of family economies than subsidies. She now announces a plan, but has not yet revealed its content.
That plan has to make a good impression in a country that is getting used to the immediate inconvenience of strikes by public transport employees, criminal lawyers, or garbage collection services, as is the case in Scotland. Strikes by civil servants, nurses, in the educational system are planned… The Police, according to ‘The Times’, fear an increase in delinquency and disturbances.
As winter approaches and energy consumption increases, families will be affected by energy prices that are already creating serious financial problems for small and medium-sized businesses. It is part of the price to pay for the war in Ukraine, in which the new government will maintain its strong support for kyiv. The population supports this commitment, but in recent years it has missed a sober and serious governance of a complex crisis.
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