LIZ Truss will be the 56th prime minister of the UK, the 15th prime minister of the Queen's reign, the fourth Tory prime minister in six years, and only the third female prime minister the country has ever had.
Unlike her predecessors, and her rival, she has a solidly middle-class background.
Her schools were comprehensives, her upbringing modest.
Her dad, John was an academic, a professor of pure mathematics. Her mum, Priscilla, a nurse and a teacher.
Ms Truss was born in Oxford in 1975 and arrived in Scotland around four years later when her father took up a position at Paisley College.
It was not a Tory household.
It was during their time in Renfrewshire when her mum became a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and took the young Liz and brothers on Ban the Bomb protest marches at Faslane, chanting “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out.”
After Paisley came a year in Canada before the family moved to Leeds where she spent five years at Roundhay School.
Ms Truss has been incredibly critical of her education here, saying that good students were held back by the standards. That’s been disputed by fellow former pupils.
During her time at school, she joined the local youth branch of the Liberal Democrats.
In 1993 she gained a place at Merton College, Oxford to read philosophy, politics and economics.
Incredibly, she is the 29th Prime Minister to have studied at the elite university.
During her time there she gave the now infamous speech at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton in 1994 where she called for the abolition of the monarchy.
Her switch from the Lib Dems to the Tories happened in the mid-90s, just as the party slouched towards its lowest ebb.
A year after she left Oxford, Truss joined the Lewisham and Deptford branch of the Conservative Party.
She met her future husband Hugh O’Leary, an accountant, at the party conference in 1997. The couple married in 2001. They have two daughters, 16-year-old Florence and 13-year-old Liberty.
At the time of the marriage, she was working as an economist for Shell before then moving to be head of public affairs for Cable & Wireless.
She stood three times to be a Tory councillor in Greenwich - losing twice and winning once - and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in solid Labour seats.
David Cameron, in a bid to try and bring more diversity to the parliamentary party, added her to his A-list of candidates,
However, her career almost ended before it had even begun when details of an affair with Tory MP Mark Field were exposed in the Daily Mail.
In 2010, the South West Norfolk Conservative Association dubbed the “Turnip Taliban” tried to get her deselected, accusing No 10 of foisting her upon them.
But Mr Cameron, keen to stop his members selecting posh, white men saw it as a battle for the soul of the Tories.
In the end, he triumphed and Ms Truss was elected as the MP for South West Norfolk in 2010.
Two years later, Mr Cameron promoted her to the role of junior minister in the Department for Education in the coalition government. Despite her history, she did not get with the Liberal Democrats.
She made it into Cabinet in 2014, becoming environment secretary, where she became known for a speech delivered to the Tory party conference criticising UK cheese lovers for prioritising European fromage.
“We import two-thirds of our cheese,” Ms Truss told the party faithful. “That is a disgrace.”
Everything changed in 2015 when the Tories won a majority, and Mr Cameron subsequently announced a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union.
When he asked his cabinet which side of the debate they would fall on, Ms Truss, like the majority of her colleagues backed remain.
Nevertheless, she was never a key figure in the referendum debate, keeping a relatively low profile.
She was appointed justice secretary in 2016, a job she held for 11 months, and one that she reportedly did not enjoy.
Theresa May then demoted Ms Truss to the role of chief secretary to the Treasury. Despite that she still managed to hold on to her seat in cabinet.
Despite the demotion, and despite the growing power of the Brexiteers in the party, Ms Truss remained loyal to the Prime Minister, repeatedly backing her deals.
However, by the time she was appointed international trade secretary by Mr Johnson in 2019, she was committed to the benefits of Brexit.
A die-hard enthusiast for free trade, she travelled the world trying to drum up business as a no-deal Brexit loomed.
The new job saw her popularity with the Tory membership soar. As the pandemic hit, she went from being the eighth most popular cabinet minister, according to Conservative Home’s monthly survey, to the most popular.
Mr Johnson appointed her as foreign secretary in September last year.
Despite being fiercely loyal, she held a number of “Fizz with Liz” events where she met with Tory backbenchers.
Though, her plans to win over the parliamentary party in the event of a leadership contest were not as effective as she may have hoped.
In the run-off stage of the leadership contest, she won the support of 113 MPs to Mr Sunak’s 137.
However, her loyalty to Mr Johnson stood her well when it came to party members, many of whom still adored their deposed leader.
In the end, the result was convincing, if closer than her supporters had hoped, with Ms Truss winning 57% of the vote.
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