FirstFT: Liz Truss wins UK premiership

Liz Truss is set to enter Downing Street after a bruising battle to become the UK’s next prime minister and will immediately start work on a two-year package of energy relief that could cost up to £100bn.

The foreign secretary beat rival and former chancellor Rishi Sunak in a ballot of Conservative party members by 81,326 votes to 60,399 — a 57-43 margin — after a seven-week contest to succeed Boris Johnson.

Truss will meet the Queen today at Balmoral, the monarch’s country estate, and will immediately return to London to announce her cabinet and address the economic crisis facing the country.

She will become Britain’s 56th prime minister and the fourth Tory occupant of Number 10 in just over six years. She will also become the country’s third female premier after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

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Do you think Truss will be successful in her pledge to help households with soaring energy bills? Tell me what you think at firstft@ft.com. Thank you for reading FirstFT Asia. — Emily

Five more stories in the news

1. KPMG sued for $830mn over Chinese audit KPMG has been accused of “appalling” audit work that allowed a US-listed Chinese biotechnology company to carry out a “brazen” $400mn accounting fraud, the Hong Kong High Court heard on Monday.

2. Xi to travel to central Asia ahead of party congress China’s president Xi Jinping will travel to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan this month to attend the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a Eurasian political and security forum. As part of Xi’s first foreign trip since the pandemic, he is also expected to meet Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the forum. (FT, Reuters)

3. Iran nuclear deal ‘in danger’, says EU chief negotiator Josep Borrell, who chairs the indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran on reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said yesterday that he was losing confidence in finding a deal.

4. Israel admits military may have killed Abu Akleh Israel’s military has admitted that there is a “high possibility” that one of its soldiers unintentionally killed the veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

5. China extends Covid lockdowns Chinese authorities have extended the Covid-19 lockdowns in Chengdu and Shenzhen, backtracking on promises of freedom for tens of millions of people in the southern megacities following mass testing campaigns. At least 68 cities are currently in partial or full lockdown in China, according to data from the country’s National Health Commission.

The day ahead

Australia monetary policy committee meeting The central bank is largely expected to raise the cash rate by another 50 basis points. (FX Street)

Booker Prize shortlist announced The Booker Prize shortlist will be announced today. You can find the longlist here.

What else we’re reading

Man of the people or agent of chaos? The political rebirth of former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan has put pressure on the government as the economy teeters. At a time of rampant inflation and IMF-induced austerity, Khan’s message has struck a chord, writes Benjamin Parkin and Farhan Bokhar.

‘A deglobalising world will be an inflationary one’ The war in Ukraine, the global carbon neutrality push, US-China decoupling, Federal Reserve rate rises putting a cap on easy money — there is no getting around the fact that a deglobalising world will also be a more inflationary one, at least in the short term, writes Rana Foroohar.

One-third of Pakistan submerged by flooding Deadly flooding in Pakistan destroyed homes and decimated crops in what the country’s officials say is an unprecedented climate disaster, affecting an estimated 30mn people or about 15 per cent of the population. Click here to sign up to our Climate Graphic: Explained newsletter.

Crypto real estate: the property market built on digital assets There are tens of thousands of bitcoin acolytes with the equivalent of more than $1mn in their digital wallets. A survey of US housebuyers found that 12 per cent of first-time buyers planned to liquidate digital assets for a downpayment. Agents are aiming to tap that pool of buyers and convert cryptocurrency into bricks and mortar.

‘I got mooed at for expressing milk at Goldman Sachs’ Bully Market is a sensational account of sexual discrimination and harassment at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs. Jamie Fiore Higgins worked at the bank for 17 years and left in 2016 but her book has lessons for any powerful organisation. Three ideas stand out, writes Pilita Clark.

Travel

The interior designer Joyce Want picks out traditional shops, rooftop picnics, boat trips to beautiful beaches to give FT Globetrotter a guide the award-winning designer’s very own HK.