Voting has ended in the UK’s ruling Conservative Party leadership election, in which former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are vying for the seat of outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The name of the winner of the party leadership and the post of prime minister will be announced in the middle of next Monday, and Queen Elizabeth II will formally nominate him as prime minister next Tuesday at a meeting to be held at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the Queen currently resides.

Truss is well ahead of Sunak in opinion polls among the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party, although Sunak had the support of more Conservative MPs in the early stages of the race.

The two candidates ended their campaign tours with a campaign conference in the capital, London, attended by thousands of party members. The crisis of unprecedented high energy prices has undermined the candidates’ campaign in light of the country’s unprecedented cost-of-living crisis for more than four decades.

The next prime minister faces major domestic challenges as the inflationary crisis and gas and electricity prices threaten to send the UK economy into recession in the coming months, with pressure mounting for the government to provide more bailouts and cut taxes and social security contributions. to help citizens bear the burden of rising electricity bills.