Truss is Now PM: Attention Turns to Who Will Get Top Jobs in New Govt

Liz Truss has met with the Queen, and so is the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Yet as she flies back to London to commence the work of government, Westminster furiously speculates on who she will select to fill the top jobs of her new government, and so signal the direction of travel she intends for the next two years.

Erstwhile Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Scotland this morning, closely followed by his successor on a second government jet — history has shown having too many senior government members on one flight is a serious security risk — and met with the Queen to officially tender his resignation.

Shortly after, Mary Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Truss — the second Prime Minister in a row to not use their actual first name, following Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson — also met with the Queen, and so they contracted the constitutional business that makes her officially the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The handover, now complete, ends the months-long process of challenges against Boris Johnson’s authority following a series of scandals rocked his credibility, and then a mammoth leadership race process.

After Conservative party insiders eliminated all outsiders and potential sources of meaningful change from the race in the first stage of the process, two final candidates — both World Economic Forum acolytes and long-term team Boris lieutenants who proposed only slight deviations from the Johnson way in their leadership pitches — were put to a vote of the party. Truss was announced to have won that final vote yesterday, and so became Prime Minister this afternoon.

Now that process is concluded, the main question is how exactly Liz Truss intends to govern, especially given the next general election is only little more than two years away, and present polling certainly does not suggest the party is on route for another 2019-style major win as things stand.

One way in which the direction of travel may be divined is who Truss will select as her own key lieutenants in the coming days. Will the British government be cleared of Boris hangovers, will red-blooded conservatives be appointed to top government roles, or will they again be dominated by moderates and wets.

Naturally, while these appointments are hours and days away, who might get what job and what this means for the country is the subject of furious speculation in Westminster.

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One outlet leading the charge on government predictions is the Conservative party-adjacent Daily Telegraph, which alongside The Sun gave all appearances of working hand-in-glove with the Johnson administration and will likely do so for the Truss, as well. Of particular interest is their belief, treated as all but fact by this point, that longstanding Truss ally Therese Coffey will be the deputy Prime Minister and health secretary, prompting many to share an archive picture of the MP apparently drunkenly smoking a cigar.

A Remainer and perceived to be on the left of the party, Coffey has only brief previous senior government experience. The Telegraph notes it was Coffey who gave Truss “moral support” when her affair with another married member of parliament in 2006 get into the newspapers.

As already noted, The Times also strongly predicts that the likely candidates for the top positions in Truss’s forthcoming government means no white male will hold one of the British ‘great offices of state’ — Prime Minister, treasury, home affairs, and foreign affairs — for the first time ever. Indicative perhaps of the very longstanding and very progressive values of Britain’s Conservative party which has gone to great lengths to change the types of people who become its elected representatives, but it is reported some are concerned that promotions are being made ont he basis of identity, rather than merit.

Citing unnamed members of Parliament, The Telegraph reports today one said of the looming decision to appoint that: “there are a lot of talented men in the 2019 intake – white straight males that never get a sniff at anything… You’ve got these great MPs and they’ve just been totally overlooked. It’s time to reward people based on talent rather than what they look like.”

Update: an earlier version of this story misidentified Coffey as a Brexit supporter. This has been updated to better reflect reality.