Liz Truss Selected as New British Prime Minister, Will Replace Boris Johnson

Britain will soon have a new prime minister. Conservative Party members have chosen Liz Truss as their new party leader, with Queen Elizabeth expected to make the formal appointment at Balmoral Castle on Tuesday.

Truss, 47, previously served as Britain's Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Minister for Women and Equalities since 2019.

She found herself embroiled in controversy early on in her career, and faced a deselection vote (which she survived) in 2009, due to allegations of an affair with a Tory MP. But she found renewed success in recent years and months, clinching victory after appealing to the right wing of Britain's Conservative party by promising to cut taxes and deal firmly with issues like Brexit and an ongoing energy crisis.

The margin of victory, however, was slimmer than many expected, with Truss winning 57% of the votes of Conservative Party members to become its leader.

"Thanks for putting your faith in me to lead our Conservative Party, the greatest political party on earth," Truss told supporters at an announcement event Monday, NBC News reports.

Truss' appointment makes her the third woman to serve as prime minister, behind Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990) and Theresa May (2016–2019).

It is to be a historic event on numerous fronts, with the Queen slated to officially appoint the new prime minister in Scotland, rather than England — a decision made to avoid any last-minute changes due to her episodic mobility issues.

The news comes nearly two months after Boris Johnson announced he had agreed to step down as the British Prime Minister in July.

The former Conservative Party leader announced his resignation outside No.10 Downing Street after losing the confidence of his cabinet. Johnson, who was elected prime minister in July 2019, had a tenure mired with scandal.

His resignation was largely prompted by the COVID-19 "Partygate" scandal, in which 16 social gatherings were found to have taken place in Downing Street during a 20-month period of various levels of COVID-related lockdowns in England.

In April, Johnson, 58, was fined by the Metropolitan Police for the parties, becoming the first U.K. Prime Minister in history to be officially found to have broken the law.

In June, he also survived a vote of confidence among his own members of parliament as a result of the investigation by 211 votes to 148 after an unknown number of Conservative MPs submitted letters stating they could no longer trust him to effectively run the U.K. government.

Johnson's premiership finally came to an end as a result of a scandal involving Conservative MP Chris Pincher, however, who was forced to resign as deputy chief whip of the Conservative Party after being suspended for allegedly groping two men at the prestigious Carlton Club in London's upscale Mayfair neighborhood.

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Pincher resigned on June 30, though it emerged that Johnson had been warned that the MP had acted similarly before promoting him to government office.

Against the backdrop of "Partygate," Pincher's resignation and other scandals — such as Johnson refurbishing his Downing Street apartment with wallpaper costing $1,000 a roll — the conservative lawmaker resigned, saying: "It's painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myself. But as we have seen at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful. When the herd moves, it moves."

He continued: "To that new leader, whoever he or she may be, I say I will give you as much support as I can. And to you the British public, I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks."