Britain’s next Prime Minister will be Boris Johnson after he won a ballot vote of Conservative Party members against Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, it was announced Tuesday.
Johnson, an avid supporter of Brexit and former Mayor of London, had been expected to clinch victory against Hunt. He will replace outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May Wednesday after she announced her resignation last month amid failure to lead the nation out of the European Union.
He won 66 percent of the vote, or 92,153 of the total 159,320 people eligible to vote. Hunt received 46,656 votes, and there were 509 rejected ballot papers. The turnout was 87.4 percent.
Johnson will be installed as prime minister in a formal handover from May on Wednesday when he will also visit the Queen and be asked to form a government. In his victory speech, Johnson praised Hunt as a formidable opponent and thanked the outgoing prime minister for her “extraordinary service to this party and our country.”
“We know the mantra of the campaign that has just gone by, it is deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn, and that is what we are going to do,” Johnson added in a brief speech. – READ MORE