Latest updates: outgoing prime minister to travel to Balmoral to see monarch before new Tory leader replaces him in office
Good morning. Boris Johnson is still prime minister, but he will offer his resignation to the Queen in Balmoral around lunchtime and Liz Truss will be prime minister when she returns to London from her own audience with the Queen. Truss will deliver a speech when she gets back, at around 4pm this afternoon.
A prime minister is never more powerful than on the day they take office and Truss’s first task once she gets to work will be to finalise her cabinet appointments. A PM can always sack ministers who obstruct their wishes, but it is easier to appoint like-minded individuals in the first place. Truss has had a lot of time to consider these appointments and, as we report, we are expecting to see a cabinet of loyalists. Tories urging her to make her team representative of all wings of the party, including one nation centrists, are likely to be disappointed, and there is speculation that it could end up looking like the most rightwing cabinet in modern times.
