Live: Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister after audience with Queen

5.08pm

5pm

The MPs who had retreated from the rain into No 11 have now returned to Downing Street as the vehicle carrying Liz Truss gets closer to Westminster.

With a break in the weather, the lectern was returned to the front of the door of No 10, with staff seen plugging the microphone cables back in.

4.57pm

4.55pm

Downing Street staff removed the lectern from outside Number 10 as the heavens opened ahead of Liz Truss’s first speech as Prime Minister.

The crowd of MPs who had gathered in the street to welcome Ms Truss have now moved indoors.

4.52pm

Thunder rumbled overhead just moments before Liz Truss’s first speech as Prime Minister.

The microphone on the lectern was covered with a black plastic bag before it was removed by staff.

4.51pm

Despite the rain, MPs were in good spirits, including Dame Andrea Leadsom, who posted a picture on Twitter with the caption ‘Still smiling’:

4.47pm

A big crowd of MPs gathered between the press pen and the gates to Downing Street.

Nadhim Zahawi, James Cleverly, Ben Wallace, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Mordaunt are among those who are waiting to welcome Prime Minister Liz Truss.

4.43pm

A member of the public has been inundated with messages intended for new Prime Minister Liz Truss, with whom she shares a similar name.

A Twitter account appearing to belong to a woman named Liz Trussell, who has the handle @LizTruss, has been mistakenly sent congratulatory messages from VIPs, including Sweden’s prime minister.

Ms Truss, who tweets under the verified account @TrussLiz, has succeeded Boris Johnson to become Britain’s new Prime Minister.

Following the announcement of Ms Truss’s Tory leadership win, Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson mistakenly tweeted a message of support to the wrong account before swiftly deleting it.

However, a screenshot of the tweet – and Ms Trussell’s reply – quickly went viral.

“Congratulations to @LizTruss, who will assume the role of Prime Minister of the UK. Sweden and UK will continue our deep and extensive cooperation. Important for our citizens, economies and security,” Ms Andersson wrote.

Ms Trussell replied: “Looking forward to a visit soon! Get the meatballs ready.”

Ms Andersson was not the only one to be confused, with Ms Trussell’s account inundated with messages of support and criticism.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas took to social media to criticise Boris Johnson’s successor but mistakenly tweeted Ms Trussell, calling her appointment a “disaster”.

She later realised her mistake and said sorry to Ms Trussell, tweeting: “Apologies, my previous tweet about #ToryLeadership should have been directed to Liz Truss (@TrussLiz) – not Liz Trussell who tweets at @LizTruss – tho frankly she’d probably make a better job of it.”

Ms Trussell responded with an emoji of two champagne glasses clinking together and wrote: “I’m in! Vegas for everybody!!!”

Despite the confusion, Ms Trussell responded to the many messages by sending light-hearted replies and joking that she was the one preparing to meet the Queen on Tuesday.

4.19pm

Staff have carried out a podium for Liz Truss’s address to the nation ahead of her arrival at Downing Street.

Hundreds of reporters and broadcasters have gathered under umbrellas facing the door to No 10.

4.10pm

Former Manchester United and England footballer – and current pundit – Gary Neville has called for a general election, arguing Ms Truss has no mandate to lead.

He wrote on Twitter: “General Election please! 81,000 Tory members voting for Liz Truss isn’t a mandate to be Prime Minister of the UK.”

4.05pm

While the day is one Ms Truss may always remember, it could be one to forget for former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was essentially ousted after a series of controversies.

Some of those are being raised again on social media today, including by Steps pop star H, who tweeted: “I will never forget that Boris broke the rules and partied… when my Grandad died alone in hospital #BorisJohnson”

4.01pm

The plane carrying Ms Truss has landed at RAF Northolt in north-west London.

Ms Truss flew from Scotland after the audience with the Queen at Balmoral which saw her take over from Boris Johnson as premier.

She will now head to Downing Street where she will make her first address to the nation as Prime Minister.

3.50pm

Umbrellas were out in force in Downing Street as the media awaited the arrival of new Prime Minister Liz Truss.

3.40pm

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, regarded as Liz Truss’s closest confidante at Westminster, has arrived in Downing Street.

She is expected to be the new health secretary and deputy prime minister.

3.35pm

Rishi Sunak made an understated first backbench contribution in Parliament since his resignation as chancellor, only a day after confirmation that he had lost the race to become leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister.

On a day of political drama which saw Boris Johnson officially resign and Mr Sunak’s leadership rival Liz Truss take the winner’s prize, the former chancellor used his newfound free time to campaign for his local hospital.

He spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on the topic of unavoidably small hospitals.

Mr Sunak said: “Thank you for accommodating me at a late stage in this debate. I hadn’t planned on speaking, but this morning I saw the order paper and it turned out I had more time on my hands than I had anticipated.”

He spoke about the Friarage Hospital in his constituency of Richmond (Yorkshire).

Mr Sunak said the accessibility of healthcare in rural areas is “an acute issue of anxiety and the pattern over several years had been in a negative direction”.

He said some trusts, particularly in rural areas, should give greater weight to accessibility when making decisions about centralisation and efficiency.

“It is important that small hospitals are recognised. That is something that is said very clearly in the five-year plan. It is important that the NHS continues to deliver on that,” he told MPs.

3.12pm

3.06pm

Unions representing civil servants have written to the newly appointed Prime Minister calling on her to crack down on sexual harassment in Westminster.

In their letter to Liz Truss, the Prospect union and the FDA said fresh leadership brings an opportunity to restore confidence that Parliament is a safe place to work.

As Prime Minister, Ms Truss has “the chance and the obligation” to correct the “erosion of ethics, standards in public life and public respect for, and confidence in, those who lead them”, they said.

The unions called for specific action, including working with the Commons Speaker and the leaders of all parties to introduce a “formal mechanism to prevent MPs accused of serious sexual misconduct from attending Parliament”.

Ms Truss should also commit to restoring ethics and standards in public life by reconsidering her apparent suggestion that she may not appoint an independent adviser on ministers’ interests to replace Lord Geidt, they said.

2.55pm

In a break with tradition, Liz Truss travelled to the Scottish Highlands to meet the Queen at Balmoral Castle, where she was asked to form a government and become prime minister.

The historic audience was the first time the 96-year-old monarch, who has faced ongoing mobility issues, had carried out the key duty at her retreat in Aberdeenshire, rather than at Buckingham Palace.

2.41pm

New Prime Minister Liz Truss has left Scotland on a flight from Aberdeen International Airport following her meeting with the Queen at Balmoral.

She will return to England, where she is expected to give a speech at Downing Street later on Tuesday afternoon.

2.27pm

Boris Johnson’s resignation speech was a “clear dig” at the MPs who ousted him, according to Will Walden, his director of communications when he was mayor of London.

“It wasn’t particularly dignified, reflective or statesmanlike and at the beginning it was pretty bitter,” Mr Walden told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme.

“It’s a clear dig, a parting shot, that the parliamentary party are out of touch and that they’ve got the decision wrong.”

He also criticised the speech for lacking any recognition that Mr Johnson’s departure from No 10 “can probably be laid almost exclusively at his behaviour and the way that he has responded to crises”.

Mr Walden said he does not believe Mr Johnson will come back and serve in frontline politics, mainly because “he needs to earn some money and he needs to move on”.

2.16pm

Liz Truss is the 15th prime minister of the Queen’s reign.

The first was Winston Churchill in 1952.

2.05pm

Liz Truss’s predecessor Boris Johnson has come in for heavy criticism from opposition MPs.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, the SNP’s Ian Blackford and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey condemned Mr Johnson’s “rosy” resignation speech as a far cry from reality and renewed calls for his successor to impose a windfall tax to combat the cost-of-living crisis.

The politicians spoke to the PA news agency on College Green in Westminster, central London, following Mr Johnson’s address outside Number 10.

Ms Rayner said he will be remembered for causing “scandal, sleaze and the highest inflation for decades”.

Sir Ed said the outgoing prime minister has “left the country devastated in his wake”.

The SNP’s Westminster leader Mr Blackford said Mr Johnson’s government had “lurched from one crisis to another” and called for a general election.

1.56pm

Senior Tory Sir Bernard Jenkin urged Liz Truss to “level with the British people” about the “utterly dire situation” the country faces in her first speech as Prime Minister.

“I hope this afternoon that in her remarks from Downing Street, which are planned later, she will level with the British people about how utterly dire the situation is,” the Liaison Committee chairman told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme.

“We’re looking at kind of five horses of apocalypse coming at the same time, a perfect storm of crises – not just the cost-of-living crisis, not just the energy crisis, we have state-on-state war in Europe for the first time since 1945, we have embedded inflation and the public finances are already shot to pieces.”

Sir Bernard added that Ms Truss has “got to prepare people, we’re not in sunny uplands”, while warning that the freezing of energy bills “is a short-term fix” as the war in Ukraine could go on for years.

1.50pm

Video: Russia reacts to Liz Truss becoming PM