Liz Truss was named as Britain's next prime minister on Monday, winning a leadership race for the governing Conservative Party at a time when the country faces a cost of living crisis, industrial unrest and a recession.

After weeks of an often bad-tempered and divisive leadership contest that saw the foreign minister face off against former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, Truss came out on top in a vote of Conservative Party members, winning by 81,326 votes to 60,399.

"We need to show that we will deliver over the next two years. I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy," Truss said after the result was announced.

"I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people's energy bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply."

The announcement triggers the start of a handover from Boris Johnson, who was forced to announce his resignation in July after months of scandal saw support for his administration drain away.

He will travel to Scotland to meet Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday to officially tender his resignation. Truss will follow him and be asked to form a government by the monarch.

Long the front-runner in the race to replace Johnson, Truss will become the Conservatives' fourth prime minister since a 2015 election. Over that period the country has been buffeted from crisis to crisis, and now faces what is forecast to be a long recession triggered by sky-rocketing inflation which hit 10.1% in July.

Foreign minister under Boris Johnson, Truss, 47, has promised to act quickly to tackle Britain's cost of living crisis, saying that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and securing future fuel supplies.

Truss has signaled during her leadership campaign she would challenge convention by scrapping tax increases and cutting other levies in a move some economists say would fuel inflation.

That, plus a pledge to review the remit of the Bank of England while protecting its independence, has prompted some investors to dump the pound and government bonds.

Kwasi Kwarteng, widely tipped to be her finance minister, sought to calm markets on Monday, by saying in an article in the Financial Times newspaper that under Truss there would need to be "some fiscal loosening" but that her administration would act in "a fiscally responsible way."

'Ties with U.K. may get even worse'

Before the announcement, the Kremlin said that it could not rule out the possibility that dire relations with Britain would get even worse under the country's next prime minister.

"I wouldn't like to say that things can change for the worse, because it's hard to imagine anything worse," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said when asked if Moscow expected any shift in relations with Britain.

"But unfortunately, this cannot be ruled out, given that the contenders for the post of British prime minister competed with each other in anti-Russian rhetoric, in threats to take further steps against our country, and so on. Therefore, I don't think that we can hope for anything positive."

Asked if Putin would send a congratulatory telegram, he said: "Let's wait and see who becomes prime minister."

Truss is chiefly known in Russia for a visit she made to Moscow in February, when she and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a rancorous meeting. After, Lavrov expressed his discontent with their dialogue, complaining that facts had "bounced off" her.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has also openly mocked her over geographical gaffes, including on one occasion when she mixed up the Black and Baltic seas.

Truss openly challenged Lavrov at their meeting over Russia's troop build-up near Ukraine, saying: "I can't see any reason for having 100,000 troops stationed on the border, apart from to threaten Ukraine." Moscow, which had denied invasion plans, sent its troops in two weeks later.

Since then, Britain has been one of the most active and vocal supporters of Ukraine in the war, supplying it with weapons and training.

Russia and Britain have had tense relations for years, hitting low points with the fatal 2006 poisoning of former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko in London and the attempted killing of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury in 2018.

Long, costly to-do list

Truss faces a long, costly and difficult to-do list, which opposition lawmakers say is the result of 12 years of poor Conservative government. Several have called for an early election - something Truss has said she will not allow.

Veteran Conservative lawmaker David Davis described the challenges she would take on as prime minister as "probably the second most difficult brief of post-war prime ministers" after Conservative Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

"I actually don't think any of the candidates, not one of them going through it, really knows quite how big this is going to be," he said, adding that costs could run into tens of billions of pounds.

Truss has said she will appoint a strong Cabinet, dispensing with what one source close to her called a "presidential-style" of governing, and she will have to work hard to win over some lawmakers in her party who had backed Sunak in the race.

The Institute for Government think-tank said Truss would have a weaker starting point than any of her predecessors, because she was not the most popular choice among her party's lawmakers.

First, she will turn to the urgent issue of surging energy prices. Average annual household utility bills are set to jump by 80% in October to 3,549 pounds, before an expected rise to 6,000 pounds in 2023, decimating personal finances.

Britain has lagged other major European countries in its offer of support for consumer energy bills, which opposition lawmakers blame on a "zombie" government unable to act while the Conservatives ran their leadership contest.

In May, the government set out a 15 billion pound ($17.23 billion) support package to help households with energy bills as part of its 37 billion pound cost-of-living support scheme.