LAST UPDATE | 5 Sep 2022
THE NEW LEADER of the UK’s Conservative party will be announced today but they will have to wait until tomorrow to be confirmed as the country’s new prime minister.
The six-weeks-long voting period for Conservative members to elect their new leader ended on Friday evening with the winner of that process, Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, set to be revealed at lunchtime today.
The British people will then have to wait perhaps another 24 hours for that person to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.
Barring faulty polling on an unprecedented scale, the new Tory leader will be Truss, the current UK Foreign Secretary.
Polls of party members have suggested that her lead in the contest has been as much as 30 percentage points. Even if the margin is not that large, the poll suggests that anything other than a Truss victory would constitute a huge surprise.
It’s been acklowdeged by the Irish government that a continuation of the policies Truss has pursued as Foreign Secretary would constitute an ongoing difficulty for UK-Irish relations.
It has been reported that Truss is to consider triggering the Article 16 clause of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which is one of the key elements in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.
Article 16 is effectively a unilateral suspension of some elements of the Protocol and doing so would prompt immediate talks between the EU and the UK.
Aside from Article 16, Truss has also been pushing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill through the the UK Parliament. That Bill also acts unilaterally to change some aspects to the Protocol and the EU has said it would breach international law.
Speaking today on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said that this bill was “even more problematic than triggering Article 16″.
Coveney said he and Taoiseach Micheal Martin were in Oxford at the weekend to meet British ministers and that “everyone was talking about what a Liz Truss premiership would look like”.
He said he hopes “the direction of travel” of British-Irish relations can be changed under a Trusss premiership.
“Whether the strident way in which she has brought forward the Northern Ireland Protocol legislation in the UK, which, of course, has created a lot of tension and undermined trust, whether that will continue to be her strategy as prime minister or not.”
Coveney also described Truss as a “talented, very energetic politician”:
She is going to be the next prime minister, and we will work with her and her team, but I hope we can change the direction of travel for British-Irish relations that we’ve seen over the last couple of years, which really has been one of tension and standoff on very important issues – predominantly related to Northern Ireland.
Royal assent
Regardless of who is announced as party leader at 12.30pm today, it begins a day of pomp and circumstance involving the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
The UK does not have a written constitution and the process by which one a prime minister is appointed is a bit different to Ireland. It is, however, governed by strict convention.
As head of state, it is the queen’s duty to appoint a prime minister who leads Her Majesty’s Government.
The Royal Encyclopedia states that the appointment of a prime minister is “one of the few remaining personal prerogatives of the sovereign”.
Essentially, the queen asks a would-be PM to form a government if the queen deems that this person commands the confidence of the House of Commons.
With the Conservatives retaining a large majority of MPs in the Commons, whoever the Tories have as their leader commands that confidence.
That person has been Johnson since he won the leadership of his party in July 2019 but his time as party leader and Prime Minister well soon be at an end.
In the normal course of events, the monarch does not act on advice nor need to consult anyone before calling upon the person who commands the support of the Commons.
Instead, the queen is guided by constitutional conventions and can seek advice from the outgoing prime minister, any other political leader, senior Privy Counsellors, or whomever she pleases within the limits of prudence and caution.
Johnson’s last duty is expected to be to tell the monarch which person has enough support to form the next government.
So what will happen in the coming days?
Johnson will inform Buckingham Palace that he will be resigning and as the UK’s Institute for Government explains:
there is a well-rehearsed sequence of events in which the outgoing prime minister travels to see the queen and formally tenders his or her resignation. They have a short audience with the queen.After the outgoing prime minister has left, the incoming prime minister arrives and is formally asked by the queen to form a government. This audience is known as ‘kissing hands’. After their appointment, the new prime minister heads straight to 10 Downing Street.
So there’s basically two parts to it, Johnson resigning and his successor getting the all-important nod from the queen. The new prime minister will be the 15th different PM of the queen’s 70-year reign.
Traditionally, this has always taken place at Buckingham Palace in London with the new prime minister heading to nearby 10 Downing Street directly afterwards.
However, the 96-year-old monarch is facing health issues and will instead be carrying out her duties in her Balmoral residence in Scotland.
This is therefore first time the handover of prime ministerial power will not take place in Buckingham Palace during her reign.
Some historic examples have been different but the Buckingham Palace venue has always been involved.
In 1963, Harold Macmillan resigned as PM while recovering from surgery. His private secretary went to the palace and afterwards the queen visited Macmillan in hospital in London, but his successor, Alec Douglas-Home, was appointed at Buckingham Palace.
After a new PM has been appointed, the Court Circular will record that “the Prime Minister kissed hands on appointment”. This is not literally the case and it is usually a handshake.
The choreography of tomorrow’s proceedings are expected to begin with Johnson heading up to Balmoral to see the queen at about 8-9.30am.
The new Tory leader will then have their own audience with the queen before they head back to London and begin the business of selecting a Cabinet.
We should then expect the UK’s new prime minister to be out before the cameras at Downing Street tomorrow afternoon.
- With reporting by Press Association
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