Liz Truss officially takes over as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while Boris Johnson says goodbye to the post months after resigning

Who is Liz Truss, the new UK Prime Minister?

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(CNN) ––

Liz Truss was officially sworn in as UK Prime Minister on Tuesday after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral, Scotland.

Her inauguration ends the political turmoil that rocked the nation for months after then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation in July following a series of scandals. 

• Who is Liz Truss, a political chameleon who was elected as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Truss, who served as Johnson's chancellor in the last year, won 57% of the Conservative Party's vote to become its leader, defeating rival Rishi Sunak, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who reached 43%.

The new prime minister comes to lead a nation with a growing economic and social crisis.

Minutes before the audience with Truss, Queen Elizabeth met with Johnson and accepted his official resignation.

Buckingham Palace announced that Johnson "had an audience with the Queen this morning and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister, which Her Majesty was pleased to accept."

The challenges of the new prime minister

Liz Truss will take the reins of the United Kingdom as Prime Minister 1:23

From the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation to utility failures, Truss faces significant challenges amid a sluggish economy and the promise of no new taxes.

Not to mention that he must do so while he leads a bitterly divided Conservative Party that is far from guaranteed support for his vision of the country.

For the first time in 40 years, UK inflation soared above 10% in July.

A figure driven by the increase in the cost of energy and food.

Additionally, average household energy bills have already increased 54% this year and are expected to rise even more.

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• Liz Truss will be the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replacing Boris Johnson

Which is bad news not only for households but also for businesses that the government helped during the pandemic.

Many of them will simply not be able to pay their bills and will be forced to close without support.

Compounding Truss's problems, however, is the fact that the nation is headed for a possible recession at the end of the year, according to the Bank of England.

The GDP fell by 0.1% in the second quarter of this year and analysts believe that the third quarter will lead the country into a technical recession.

And on Monday, in a sign of serious challenges ahead, the British pound fell 0.3% to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1985, before recovering slightly.

Who is Liz Truss?

Liz Truss can be defined as a political chameleon who has gone from being a radical abolitionist to a standard-bearer for the Eurosceptic conservative right.

Only elected to Parliament in 2010, she has established herself in a relatively short period as a political force pursuing her agenda with relentless vigor and unequivocal enthusiasm.

To say that Truss has been on a political journey would be an understatement.

She was born in 1975 into a family that she herself has described as "to the left of Labour", the main socialist opposition.

She grew up in parts of the UK that traditionally didn't vote Conservative, moving between Scotland and the north of England.

Unlike his privately educated colleagues in Johnson's cabinet, Truss went to public school in Leeds and later earned a place at Oxford University.

There he was an active member of the Liberal Democrats, a centrist opposition party that has long been an effective opponent of the Conservatives in much of England.

During his time as a Liberal Democrat, Truss supported the legalization of cannabis and the abolition of the royal family, positions that are at odds with what most would consider mainstream conservatism in 2022.

Truss says she joined the Conservatives in 1996, just two years after she gave a speech at a Liberal Democrat conference calling for an end to the monarchy.

Even then, her fellow liberal Democrats questioned her sincerity, detecting traits they still see in her today.

"Honestly, I think she was saying what her voters wanted to hear back then, whether she was talking about decriminalizing drugs or abolishing the monarchy," Neil Fawcett, a Liberal Democrat councilman who campaigned with Truss in Washington, previously told CNN. the 1990s. "I think she's someone who entertains the audience she's speaking to, and I really don't know if she ever believes anything she says, back then or now."

Truss has certainly continued to capture the attention of her audience.

Since he joined the Conservatives and is a Member of Parliament, he has fervently supported just about every ideology imaginable.

She loyally served three prime ministers in several different cabinet positions, and was foreign secretary.

In particular, he supported remaining in the European Union in 2016. At the time, Truss tweeted that he backed those who wanted to stay in the bloc because "it is in Britain's economic interest and means we can focus on vital economic and social reform at home." ."

Truss now backs Brexit, saying her fears before the referendum that it could cause "disruption" were wrong.

The challenger is even threatening to scrap all remaining European Union legislation in the UK and nullify the Brexit deal that Johnson negotiated with Brussels in a way the EU believes is illegal.

She also blamed France and the EU for border controls at Dover, the main port between the UK and France.

Boris Johnson Liz Truss