Liz Truss has pledged to "deliver" on the energy crisis, as Tory members chose her to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.
Ms Truss defeated rival Rishi Sunak with 81,326 votes to 60,399 and will move into Number 10 on Tuesday with the immediate challenge of easing the cost-of-living crisis for households. To rapturous applause from Conservative members, Ms Truss said she would "deliver" a bold plan to "cut taxes and grow our economy" and would provide support with spiralling energy bills.
She added: "I will deliver on the National Health Service, we all will deliver for all for our country and I will make sure that we use all the fantastic talents of the Conservative Party, our brilliant Members of Parliament and peers are fantastic councillors, our MSPs, all of our activists and members right across our country.
READ MORE: Everything Liz Truss has said about energy bills help and cost of living
"We will deliver, we will deliver and we will deliver. We deliver a great victory for the Conservative Party in 2024."
Ms Truss is widely expected to introduce an energy bills freeze in some form, with the package potentially on the scale of the furlough scheme introduced by then-chancellor Mr Sunak when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Ms Truss had used an interview on the BBC on Sunday to insist that she would within a week reveal fresh help for struggling households, but repeatedly declined to spell out what those support measures might look like.
“Before you have been elected as prime minister, you don’t have all the wherewithal to get the things done,” she told the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
“This is why it will take a week to sort out the precise plans and make sure we are able to announce them. That is why I cannot go into details at this stage. It would be wrong.”
What do you make of the UK's new Prime Minister? Have your say in our comments.
It comes as Kwasi Kwarteng, widely tipped to be the next chancellor if Ms Truss is successful on Monday, used an article in the Financial Times to stress that the next Government will behave in a “fiscally responsible” way.
Mr Kwarteng, the current Business and Energy Secretary, appeared to try to address concerns about Ms Truss’s tax-cutting strategy, which rival Mr Sunak warned would only worsen the grim economic situation facing the UK.
Mr Kwarteng said there will be “some fiscal loosening” in a Truss administration to help households through the winter, stressing that it is the “right thing” to do.
He said the UK does not need “excessive fiscal tightening”, pointing to the UK’s ratio of debt to GDP compared with other major economies.
Reacting to Ms Truss' appointment, Zoë Billingham, director of IPPR North, said: “Liz Truss and her party were elected to government on a promise to level up the country. This mandate and need hasn’t changed.
"Levelling up – narrowing inequalities between and within places – remains imperative in order to protect people from increasingly difficult economic conditions both now and in the future.”
Denton and Reddish MP Andrew Gwynne said: "Remember, this is not a new government. It will be the same faces rearranged. Deckchairs moved as Great Britain sinks. It’s time for real change."
Read more of today's top stories here.
READ NEXT:
