| Struggling families desperate for help with soaring energy bills and the cost-of-living crisis will have to wait up to another week to find out what support they will get if Liz Truss wins the Tory leadership. The No10 race victor will be unveiled at lunchtime today and become Prime Minister on Tuesday. If Truss wins, as she's expected to do, she will become Britain's third female Prime Minister but the set of issues she inherits make even Theresa May's post-Brexit challenge seem small.
With the economy in greater trouble and a cost of living crisis greater than at any time since 2008, as well as industrial unrest and the prospect of a winter of discontent there are echoes of the time Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979. Experts are predicting a recession, inflation is rampaging at 10.1 per cent, mortgage rates are climbing and the energy price cap is rocketing from £1,971 to £3,549 on October 1. Ms Truss's bitter No10 rival - former Chancellor Rishi Sunak - warned the UK faces "a genuine emergency" on dual fuel bills. But he is braced for defeat when the leadership contest result is announced at lunchtime. He is set to return to the backbenches. Hours ahead of her anticipated arrival in No10, Ms Truss indicated her "precise plans" for tackling the misery may have to be overhauled. "Before you have been elected as Prime Minister, you don't have all the wherewithal to get the things done," she told BBC1's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. "This is why it will take a week to sort out the precise plans and make sure we are able to announce them. "That is why I cannot go into details at this stage; it would be wrong. But what I want to be very clear about with the public is I understand that this is a huge problem." Foreign Secretary Ms Truss is the overwhelming favourite to triumph but has repeatedly refused to outline how she would help households. Today she claimed: "I'm not being coy. What I've been very clear about is that I would act immediately, within a week. I understand what people are facing on energy bills." Boris Johnson will fly to Scotland on Tuesday to formally resign to the Queen at Balmoral. If she wins the Downing Street battle, Ms Truss will follow him 520 miles north where the monarch will invite her to form a Government.
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