Boris Johnson has been elected Conservative Party leader and has used his acceptance speech to stress that leaving the EU will be his priority for the comig months.
Johnson won the ballot of party members to clinch the appointment with 92,153 votes, it was announced this morning, while his rival Jeremy Hunt trailed with 46,656.
In a short acceptance speech ahead of Johnson becoming prime minister tomorrow, he said he would harness the "spirit of can do" to harness the benefits of Brexit.
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He reiterated his campaign promise to “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn”, later promising to deliver “better infrastructure, better education, more police, fantastic, full-fibre broadband”.
The freshly-elected Conservative party leader will formally take over as prime minister after Theresa May’s final appearance at prime minister’s questions tomorrow, with a wave of ministerial resignations expected to follow shortly after.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said this weekend that he would hand in his resignation if Johnson were made prime minister, owing to Johnson's willingness to leave the EU without a deal. "I cannot accept the idea of leaving with no-deal on October 31," he said on Sunday.
It had been reported that Johnson will soon pledge swift action to address the looming social care funding crisis and increase schools spending, in an effort to expand the scope of his leadership platform beyond Brexit.
A source told The Sun, which trailed the announcements last night, that Johnson wanted to establish “as soon as possible that he’s about more than Brexit”.
“We are have to get the two big policy barnacles of schools funding and social care off the boat now in case we have to go to the country in the autumn.”
During the leadership campaign, Johnson said he planned to overhaul the social care system to ensure no one with dementia should have to sell their home to pay for care. “It is inequitable, some families having to raise hundreds of thousands in order to pay for the costs of care, others are getting those costs met, or at least partly met," he told the Express last week.
And previously Johnson has promised to increase secondary schools funding to £5,000 per pupil.
Johnson has been tight-lipped on his plans for Whitehall, but previously said he wanted the Department for International Development to be subsumed into the Foreign Office.
Last month it was reported that Johnson’s campaign was drawing up plans to scrap several departments in a bid to save money and cut down on bureaucracy, but he has not commented on the rumours publicly.
The Ministry of Justice, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Transport and the Department for Exiting the European Union could all face being scrapped or subsumed into other departments, according to the media reports.