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British Prime Minister Truss announces his resignation as Prime Minister
British Prime Minister Truss (also translated: Zhuohuisi) announced his resignation as Prime Minister on Thursday (October 20). She will resign within a week after finding a Conservative leader to replace her.
The new leader will be the Conservative Party’s fifth prime minister in six years.
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Rishi Sunak
Who might be the replacement for Tras?
- Rishi Sunak: Sunak ran to replace Boris Johnson as party leader this summer and has finished in the top two with Truss. During the campaign, he warned that his opponent’s tax plan would hurt the economy, but his message failed to attract members of the party and he lost by 21,000 votes.
- Penny Mordaunt: Penny Mordaunt is the Conservative leader of the House of Commons and president of the Privy Council. In 2019, she made history as the UK’s first female defence secretary.
- Boris Johnson: With just a week to elect a new leader, many of the contenders are likely to be familiar faces, especially those who were prime minister just a few weeks ago. Johnson resigned amid mass protests in July, but he still has allies in parliament and in his party.
- Ben Wallace: Wallace is the current Secretary of State for Defence in the United Kingdom. Wallace has drawn increasing attention since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, due to the early British decision to provide Ukraine with arms and training support. Despite his opposition to Brexit, Wallace has been a key supporter of Boris Johnson and won a cabinet position in 2019.
- Kemi Badenoch: Badenoch is the current UK trade secretary. She was born in South London and grew up in the US and Nigeria. Before entering parliament, she worked for Guzbank and The Spectator magazine.
- Suella Braverman: Braverman, who briefly served as cabinet minister from September to October this year, added pressure to Truss, who also resigned less than 24 hours later. Although Braverman’s departure was ostensibly over a data breach, the outrage expressed in her resignation letter suggested the two were at odds over immigration.
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Boris Johnson
How will the Conservative Party elect a new leader?
Nominations to succeed Truss as the next Conservative leader and prime minister are now open and will close at 14:00 BST on Monday 24 October.
To run, candidates need to be nominated by at least 100 Conservative MPs. That’s far higher than the last campaign, when only 20 nominations were needed. As the Conservative Party currently has 357 MPs, only a maximum of three candidates can be nominated.
If only one person reaches the 100-vote threshold on Monday, he will become the next leader and then the new prime minister, without the need for the next stage of competition.
If there are three candidates, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated directly. Conservative MPs will vote on the remaining two candidates between 18:30 and 20:30 daylight saving time on the same day, and the results will be out at 21:00 on the same day.
If no one withdraws after the indicative vote, the entire Conservative Party will vote online to decide the winner. The two candidates are expected to participate in a televised debate before party members vote close. A winner will be produced on Friday, October 28.
How is the next prime minister appointed?
Whoever wins the Conservative leadership race will be the leader of the party with the largest number of MPs in Parliament.
So the king will ask him or her to form a government and become Britain’s next prime minister in the process.
Will there be an election?
There is no automatic general election when a new prime minister is appointed.
If the new prime minister decides not to call an early general election, the next general election will not be held until January 2025 at the latest.
Truss: A 90-second look back at her 45-day tenure as UK prime minister
How was Truss selected?
The summer leadership race that Truss won lasted three months.
Candidates can only run if they have the support of at least 20 Conservative MPs, with eight candidates appearing, including Truss.
In the first stage of the campaign, Conservative MPs chose two candidates for a vote of the wider party membership.
To do so, the Conservative Party’s 358 MPs cut their rivals through a series of votes.
Anyone with fewer than 30 votes or the bottom of the ballot in each round will be eliminated. The process continued until only the last two candidates remained: Truss and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.
In the second stage, Conservative Party members choose the eventual winner through postal and online voting lasting several weeks.
When the election results were announced on September 5, Truss had won 81,326 votes, while Sunak had 60,399 votes.