In her first address to the nation, Prime Minister Liz Truss promised to help the United Kingdom “ride out the storm” of the multiple crises facing the nation, including the soaring cost of living and the energy crisis, however, the newly installed leader made no mention of the illegal migrant crisis in the English Channel.
Truss, who won the Conservative party leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson by a margin of 57.3 per cent to 42.6 per cent over her challenger Rishi Sunak, became the third female Tory politician to ascend to the rank of prime minister following Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II this morning at the Monarch’s Scottish estate at Balmoral.
In the address delivered on the doorstep of Number 10 Downing Street, which was delayed due to a downpour of rain, first paid “tribute” to her predecessor, saying: “Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.”
“We now face severe global headwinds, caused by Russia’s appalling war in Ukraine and the aftermath of Covid. Now is the time to tackle the issues that are holding Britain back, we need to build roads, homes, and broadband faster. We need more jobs and investment in every town and city across our country. We need to reduce the burden on families and help people get on in life,” she said.
While she acknowledged that it will be difficult, Truss said that she plans on transforming Britain into an “aspiration nation”, with high-paying jobs, safe streets, and opportunities for all.
Truss said that she will focus on three main priorities at the start of her premiership: incentivising economic growth through tax cuts and other unnamed reforms, dealing with the energy crisis “caused by Putin’s war” by shoring up domestic energy supplies and other actions — a possible allusion to reports that she is planning on freezing energy bills with a giant £100 billion government subsidy — and finally, she pledged to put the country’s socialised healthcare system on a “firm footing” so that people can actually get appointments with their doctors.
“As strong as this storm may be, I know that the British people are stronger. Our country was built by people who get things done. We have huge reserves of talent, energy, and determination. I am confident that together we can ride out the storm, we can rebuild our economy and we can become the modern Brilliant Britain that I know we can be,” she concluded.
During the long and drawn-out leadership selection process over the Summer, Truss attempted to cast herself as the small-c conservative candidate, vowing to lower taxes to combat the cost of living crisis, and open up fracking and oil exploration to mitigate the green agenda-induced energy crisis, as well as vowing to take on woke politics within her own government at the deep state civil service.
However, others have expressed scepticism over her history as a Liberal Democrat and her opposition to the EU Referendum in 2016, with Brexit leader Nigel Farage branding Truss “Theresa May 2.0“.
Concerningly, the World Economic Forum-aligned has also vowed to fulfil Boris Johnson’s pledge to radically transform the UK economy so that the UK can claim to have ‘Net-Zero’ carbon emissions by the year 2050.
The new Prime Minister has also largely ignored the growing boat migrant crisis in the English Channel, which has seen record numbers of illegals land on British shores, merely promising to increase the number of frontline Border Force officials, something that would do little to mitigate the problem given that the force does not stop people smuggling boats but rather ferries migrants safely ashore in Britain.
In addition to facing several ongoing crises, Truss is taking over a severely damaged Conservative Party, with the latest polling from YouGov of general voting intention among the public seeing the Tories trail behind the opposition left-wing Labour party by a margin of 43 per cent to 28. With the next general election looming and without a claim to have a mandate from the public, Truss could become the first Conservative PM to hand over the keys to Downing Street to Labour in nearly 30 years.
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