UK PRIME MINISTER: TRUSS TO SUCCEED JOHNSON.

Caroline Ameh

Ms. Liz Truss, 47, has emerged as the favourite candidate to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the ruling Conservative Party and UK Prime Minister.

Ms. Truss used her political experience to pull ahead of her challenger Rishi Sunak.

Ms. Truss persistently drove home a direct and consistent message, promising massive tax cuts, and has shied away from criticizing Johnson describing her ascent towards the top of British politics as a “journey” that has seen her criticized for being ambitiously opportunistic.

Coming from a left-wing family and initially joined the centrist Liberal Democrats before jumping ship to the right-wing Conservatives, she became MP for the South West Norfolk constituency in eastern England in 2010, surviving revelations of an affair that almost cost her the nomination.

In 2016, she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union but quickly became one of its strongest supporters when Britons voted for Brexit. In the role, she took on the controversial task of trying to overhaul differences with Brussels about post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland.

Like Johnson, she has talked tough on Russia and given unswerving backing for Ukraine.

Ms. Truss went to a state school in Leeds, northern England, also studied at Oxford where she studied politics, philosophy, and economics.