How Liz Truss won the Conservative leadership race
- Published
Liz Truss has won the contest to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader and prime minister.
The foreign secretary beat former Chancellor Rishi Sunak in a ballot of Conservative members - winning by about 21,000 votes.
Ms Truss set out some of her policies during the leadership campaign and has promised to hit the ground running. Here are some of the key pledges and plans she outlined.
What has Liz Truss said on the big issues?
Cost of living
- Promises to announce a plan to help people and businesses with soaring energy costs within a week of becoming prime minister
- Plans an emergency budget to set out measures that would get the economy growing in order to fund public services and the NHS
- Says she will tackle the crisis by putting money back into people’s pockets, such as by immediately reversing the National Insurance rise
- Promises not to revisit the idea of windfall taxes on energy firms and rules out energy rationing this winter
- Would suspend what is known as the “green levy” - part of your energy bill that pays for social and green projects
- Promises to change taxes to make it easier for people to stay at home to care for children or elderly relatives
- Says the Bank of England needs to do more to tackle inflation, arguing "we haven't been tough enough on the monetary supply" during a leadership debate
Read more about Liz Truss
Tax & spending
- Says she will reverse the recent rise in National Insurance, which came into effect in April, and hold an emergency budget by the end of September
- Pledges not to bring in any new taxes and to scrap a planned rise in corporation tax - set to increase from 19% to 25% in 2023
- Would suspend what is known as the “green levy” - part of your energy bill that pays for social and green projects
- Says she will pay for the cuts by spreading the UK's "Covid debt" over a longer period
- Promises to change taxes to make it easier for people to stay at home to care for children or elderly relatives
- Wants to create new “low-tax and low-regulation zones” across the country to create hubs for innovation and enterprise
- Says she won’t cut public spending unless there is a way to do so that won’t lead to future problems
- Would bring target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence forward to 2026 and introduce a new target of 3% by 2030
Read more about Liz Truss
Climate
- Says she will honour the goal of reaching net zero by 2050 and spoke of “accelerating our transition to net zero” at the COP26 climate summit
- Would suspend what is known as the “green levy” - part of your energy bill that pays for social and green projects
- Would review the ban on fracking
- Says the UK needs to build more nuclear power stations and small modular nuclear reactors and would review the ban on fracking
- Wants to protect wildlife and biodiversity better and would launch a new UK survey of wildlife to understand which species are endangered
- As environment secretary, she cut subsidies for solar farms calling them “a blight on the landscape”
Read more about Liz Truss
Brexit
- Argues she can be trusted with Brexit despite voting Remain in the 2016 referendum
- Responsible for introducing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which could override parts of the post-Brexit deal between the UK and the EU
- Says UK courts should be the "ultimate arbiter" and that trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain must be "free-flowing"
- Promises to scrap or replace by the end of 2023 EU laws considered to be holding back the economy
Read more about Liz Truss
Health & social care
- Has pledged to divert a greater share of healthcare spending towards helping with social care
- Says GP services need to be more accessible in order to reduce the pressures on hospital services
- Says there should be more mental health support available in schools
- Wants to encourage doctors who came out of retirement to help the NHS during the pandemic "to come back into the profession"
Read more about Liz Truss
Education
- Pledges to give every child “the best opportunity to succeed” wherever they are from and whatever their background
- Would expand existing high-performing academy schools, and replace failing establishments with free schools
- Promises parents more childcare around the school day and to widen the range of providers who accept government childcare entitlements
- Wants to reform university admission procedures so students apply after getting their A-levels (or equivalent) rather than based on predicted grades
- Says students receiving top grades should be invited automatically to apply to Oxford and Cambridge
- Wants more mental health support available in schools
- Says she wants schools to provide single sex toilets
Read more about Liz Truss
Housing & planning
- Says she would end "Stalinist" housing targets - the government currently wants 300,000 homes built in England every year
- Plans to create "opportunity zones" with tax cuts and deregulation, making it easier and quicker to build on brownfield sites
- Wants to help first-time buyers by incorporating rental payments into mortgage assessments
Read more about Liz Truss
Who chose the winner?
The Conservative Party said 172,000 people were eligible to vote in the final stage of the contest, or about 0.3% of the total UK electorate, and that about 142,000 voted.
Research suggests that, like members of the other major parties, Tories tend to be older, more middle class and more white than the rest of the population.
Who did the final two beat?
Mr Sunak and Ms Truss reached the last round of the contest after a series of votes by Tory MPs reduced the field of contenders from eight to two.
The former chancellor had been in the lead in every round of voting and ended with 137 votes in the fifth and final ballot, but Ms Truss overtook Penny Mordaunt only in the final round to secure second place with 113 votes.
What was the leadership selection process?
The timetable for the Tory leadership race was confirmed by Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of the party's backbench MPs after Mr Johnson announced he would be stepping down.
People putting themselves forward had to secure the backing of 20 Tory MPs - a higher threshold than in previous contests. Former Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and Foreign Office minister Rehman Chishti, who had all announced they planned to run, failed to do so and dropped out.
Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi did not get the 30 votes from Tory MPs needed to progress from the first round of voting.
Attorney General Suella Braverman was eliminated after getting the fewest votes in the second round, while Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch were eliminated in the third and fourth rounds respectively.
