New British Prime Minister Liz Truss has selected a Cabinet where for the first time a white man will not hold one of the country's four most important ministerial positions.

After she became U.K. premier on Tuesday, Truss quickly began appointing senior members of her Cabinet as she tackles an inbox dominated by the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which threatens to push energy bills to unaffordable levels, shuttering businesses and leaving the nation’s poorest people shivering at home this winter.

Truss – Britain’s third female prime minister – named a top team diverse in gender and ethnicity, but loyal to her and her free-market politics. Kwasi Kwarteng becomes the first black U.K. Treasury chief, and Therese Coffey its first female deputy prime minister. Other appointments include James Cleverly as foreign secretary and Suella Braverman as home secretary, responsible for immigration and law and order.

Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, has in the past spoken about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has said the party needs to do more to attract black voters.

Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second ethnic minority home secretary, or interior minister, where she will be responsible for police and immigration.

The growing diversity is in part thanks to a push by the Conservative Party in recent years to put forward a more varied set of candidates for Parliament.

British governments have until a few decades ago been made up of mostly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority cabinet minister when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hardline Brexiteer who has decried "climate alarmism," was appointed as secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy.

"Politics has set the pace. We now treat it as normal, this diversity," said Sunder Katwala, director of the non-partisan think tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity. "The pace of change is extraordinary."

However, the upper ranks of business, the judiciary, the civil service and army are all still predominately white.

And despite the party's diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative members of parliament are women and 6% from minority backgrounds.

Rewarding allies, sacking rival's supporters

Truss, 47, took office earlier in the day at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, when Queen Elizabeth II formally asked her to form a new government in a ceremony dictated by centuries of tradition. Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson formally resigned during his own audience with the queen a short time earlier, two months after he had announced his intention to step down.

It was the first time in the queen’s 70-year reign that the handover of power took place at Balmoral, rather than Buckingham Palace in London. The ceremony was moved to Scotland to provide certainty about the schedule, because the 96-year-old queen has experienced problems getting around that have forced palace officials to make decisions about her travel on a day-to-day basis.

Rishi Sunak, whose parents came from India, was Kwarteng's predecessor in the finance job and the runner-up to Truss in the leadership context.

Sunak, the former chancellor whose resignation helped trigger the downfall of Johnson, has also made clear he did not expect to be offered a new job.

His supporters, however, have been urging Truss to appoint an "inclusive" Cabinet and not simply surround herself with loyalists in the way that Johnson was accused of doing.

Johnny Mercer, who did not say who he was backing in the race, said he was "disappointed" to be sacked as veterans' affairs minister, but accepted the prime minister is "entitled to reward her supporters."

First Truss despatched former Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab and cabinet colleagues Grant Shapps, George Eustice and Steve Barclay to the backbenches after they supported her rival in the Tory leadership contest.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a call from Truss on her first day. She also spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter: "I was the first among foreign leaders to have a conversation with the newly elected British Prime Minister, Liz Truss. I invited her to Ukraine. I thanked the people of Britain for their leadership in the military and economic support of Ukraine."

Biden, who worked closely with Johnson in confronting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was quick to congratulate Truss.

"I look forward to deepening the special relationship between our countries and working in close cooperation on global challenges, including continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression," he said on Twitter.

Truss’ office said she and Biden discussed the Ukraine war and defense cooperation, as well as economic issues and maintaining the British-Irish Good Friday Agreement. The leaders were expected to meet in person soon – likely around this month’s U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

Track record

Nevertheless, the Conservatives have the best track record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister in Benjamin Disraeli in 1868.

This is despite the fact ethnic minority voters are much more likely to back the opposition Labour Party and the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia.

Johnson apologized in 2019 for describing Muslim women wearing burqas as looking like letter boxes.

The Conservatives have elected all three of Britain's female prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss. The first lawmaker of Asian descent, Mancherjee Bhownaggree in 1895, also came from the Conservatives.

Johnson assembled the youngest and most ethnically diverse Cabinet in history when he was elected prime minister in 2019. His three finance ministers included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background.

The changes followed a yearslong effort by former leader and Prime Minister David Cameron.

When he took over in 2005, the party had just two ethnic minority lawmakers out of 196, and he set out to ensure that his party more closely resembled the modern Britain it hoped to lead.

The next year, Cameron introduced a priority list of female and minority candidates to be selected, many for safe seats in the House of Commons. Truss was a beneficiary of this push.

"A key part of ensuring the strength and resilience of any group, including a political party, is the avoidance of everyone thinking and acting in the same way – the avoidance of group-think," said James Arbuthnot, a member of the party board's committee on candidates when Cameron introduced the changes.

But Kwarteng has played down the significance of his ethnicity. He has said that, although he experienced racist insults growing up in the 80s, he does not see himself as a symbol of anyone other than his constituents in Spelthorne, which borders London's southwest suburbs.

"I actually think that it's not that much of a big deal," he said after being appointed as the first black Conservative front-bench minister. "I think once you've made the point, I don't think it's something that comes up that much."