And on the 15th, Queen Elizabeth will appoint Liz Truss as Prime Minister on Tuesday. The leader of the Conservative Party is the 15th Prime Minister that the sovereign has known in 70 years of reign.
The royal family’s official account also tweeted “on Tuesday:
Later today, the Queen will receive Liz Truss at Balmoral Castle to formalize her assumption as Prime Minister. Madame Truss is the fifteenth Prime Minister to serve during Her Majesty’s reign. The first was Winston Churchill in 1952.”
• The third woman
Liz Truss is only the third woman to hold the post, after Margaret Thatcher, who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1979 to 1990, and Theresa May, Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, who preceded Boris Johnson at number 10. of Downing Street. Liz Truss, a former UK chief diplomat, says Margaret Thatcher also inspires her.
I’m not sure the queen and the new prime minister would evoke this video in which Liz Truss called for the abolition of the monarchy. It must be said that this speech dates back to 1994 and that Liz Truss was then just a young student at Oxford.
• Neutrality
Regardless of what she thinks about her new Prime Minister and her politics, the Queen won’t say a word to anyone. In fact, she maintains the strictest neutrality. A caveat that Prince Charles, the future king of England, sometimes has a hard time respecting.
“As head of state, the queen must remain strictly neutral in political matters,” recalls the official royal site.
“By convention, the Queen does not vote or stand for election, but Her Majesty has important ceremonial and formal duties in relation to the government of the United Kingdom.”
Appointing the Prime Minister is one of the last prerogatives of the British sovereign, notes the BBC, relying on the royal encyclopedia. It is this mission that the sovereign will fulfill this Tuesday, successively receiving Boris Johnson, the outgoing prime minister, who presents his resignation, and Liz Truss, appointed this Monday by the Conservative Party, to succeed him.
• First time at Balmoral
This year, and for the first time in her reign, the Queen will not appoint the country’s new leader at Buckingham Palace in London, but at Balmoral, Scotland, where she spends her holidays.
Holding the event in Buckingham was considered, but this grueling round trip risked exhausting the 96-year-old sovereign, who now limits her travel and public appearances. In addition, the queen also has mobility problems. If she wants to secure her role to the end, she was recently forced to give up some of her commitments. She thus yielded to Carlos the speech from the throne before the British parliament last May.
• Weekly hearings
It is therefore with Liz Truss that the Queen will hold her weekly audiences, to discuss the affairs of the country, as she has done since the beginning of her reign. The queen missed only a few of these appointments. She recently had to leave him last February when she had Covid.
In recent times, and since moving to Windsor, the Queen has been conducting these hearings by telephone. No record is kept of these conversations between the Queen and the Prime Minister.
• Churchill, the mentor
Churchill is the only prime minister who knew Queen Elizabeth before her reign. He played a mentor role in his life. “Churchill became the Queen’s closest adviser during the early years of her reign,” a National Trust representative told a photo exhibition in early 2022 at Chartwell, where Churchill lived. . “This relationship meant a lot to her.”
For Churchill’s home curator, the photographs of Queen Elizabeth and the prime minister show a “genuine warmth and friendship that went beyond monarch and council.”
Source: BFM TV
