Will Liz Truss Deliver Solutions To The Many Crises Facing Us All?

The news has just come through less than half an hour ago as we write this blog that Liz Truss will be the next Prime Minister of the UK. She has just won a hard fought, and rather bitter battle, against her final opponent Rishi Sunak to become the successor to Boris Johnson. The polling was closer than expected with Liz Truss getting just over 80,000 votes from the overall total of 170,000 or so Tory members.

Standing On A Platform Of Lower Taxation

So what can we expect from our new prime minister? There is no doubt she stands on the right of her party, despite her previously being a member of the Lib Dems and a former Remainer. And she has stood on a platform of lower taxation in a bid to encourage economic growth. However with the cost of living crisis, along with the cost of doing business crisis, at the forefront of everyone’s mind, her first act will have to be to bring some financial assistance to those people and businesses in the most need. This normally would mean that taxes would have to be increased to help pay for these measures, so how this will square up with cutting taxes is anyone’s guess.

There will certainly be no honeymoon period for her as there are so many urgent issues to address. Not least of these is the huge rise in energy prices which is leaving many families and businesses at breaking point, along with the double digit rises in inflation which is meaning that consumers have very little spare change in their pockets if any at all. Recent reports have suggested that a third of households in the UK are sliding into debt and we have only just started on the rises in energy bills.

Uniting A Party Torn Apart Over The Last Few Months

As well as the above she has to somehow unite a party which has been torn apart over the last few months with internal wrangling and does not seem any closer to resolving these issues. And over here in Northern Ireland there is still the small matter of Brexit and how it has affected trading, some positively and some not so positively depending on what type of business and trading you are dealing with. The government must sit down with the EU and somehow find a happy medium so that trading across borders can be as smooth and as friction-less as possible.

Finally there are still huge problems in the health service and social care, not to mention the possibility of strikes from many different sectors as workers find that their wage packets are simply not enough to pay the bills. Good luck to Liz Truss, she is certainly in for a very bumpy ride!