Boris Johnson has been elected leader of the ruling Conservative party and will become the next prime minister on Wednesday, taking on the challenging Brexit that consumed his predecessor, Theresa May.
Boris Johnson, 55, a former journalist educated in Eton and Oxford, won the leadership contest against foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who polled 92,152 of the 1.6 lakh votes from members of the party, which is leading a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party.
Theresa May will formally step down before Queen Elizabeth on Wednesday after attending her last Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons. Johnson will then be invited to Buckingham Palace and return to Downing Street as prime minister and address the nation.
Anticipating Johnson’s election and taking over as the prime minister, ministers in the outgoing May government have symbolically resigned or announced they will resign as a sign of opposition to him, opening another divide within the ruling party.
Faced with the task of uniting the party and country, as well as navigating the Brexit minefield, Johnson, a former two-term London mayor, is likely to forego summer holidays because the new deadline to leave the European Union is three months away, October 31.
