‘Kissing hands’: British weather could complicate Liz Truss visit to Queen

London: The notorious British weather could play havoc with plans for Liz Truss to be sworn in as its new prime minister amid forecasts for thunderstorms and heavy rain in Scotland, where she must fly to meet the Queen.

Truss, who won a vote of more than 140,000 Conservative Party members to replace Boris Johnson as leader on Monday evening, will take over the reins at Downing Street following a traditional 30-minute audience with the monarch.

New Conservative Party leader and incoming prime minister Liz Truss leaves Conservative Party Headquarters.Credit:Getty

The palace announced last week the 96-year-old sovereign, whose health is fragile, would not travel and has remained at Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands, where she is on her annual summer holiday.

The circumstances have made the arrangements for the historic event more complicated than usual, and will involve Truss and Johnson flying to Scotland in separate private jets.

Johnson will give a farewell address outside No.10 Downing Street about 4.30pm Australia time – which is 7.30am in London because the weather is expected to turn bad in both places later in the day and officials want to avoid the rain.

Britain’s Met Office said Balmoral Castle was predicted to be hit with thunder, lightning and rain while thunderstorms were also expected in London, with a chance of hail also bearing down on Westminster.

Following Johnson’s statement to the nation, he will fly to Scotland by government jet for a final audience with the Queen at her home, where he will tender his official resignation.

Truss will also make the 1600km round trip but on a separate jet, which officials said was for security reasons. She will have her audience with the Queen around 9pm AEST and will leave as prime minister.

The traditional “kissing hands” ceremony would usually take place at Buckingham Palace.

She is expected, weather permitting, to arrive back in London for on Tuesday, local time, to move into the prime ministerial residence at Downing Street, where she will make her first speech on the doorstep of No.10 at 4pm, London-time (1am Wednesday AEST).

The government has planned alternative arrangements if it is raining heavily and she cannot give a statement which is traditionally held outside.

Truss is expected to appoint the bulk of her Cabinet after arriving back at No 10. A handover between the two politicians’ political staffers will take place while they are in Scotland.

The 47-year-old said it was an honour to be elected to lead the “greatest political party on earth” after it was announced she had secured 57.4 per cent of votes compared to Rishi Sunak’s 42.6 per cent, a narrower than expected victory.

Queen Elizabeth II.Credit:Getty Images

“As your party leader I intend to deliver what we promised those voters right across the country,” Truss told party members in a short speech after the result was announced.

Truss inherits a perilous economic situation, with 40-year high inflation and a forecast lengthy recession at the end of the year.

Movements on the currency markets underscored the challenges facing Britain. The pound slumped to a near 40-year low against the US dollar on Wednesday, pushing the currency below pandemic levels to $1.144 as markets take fright at the UK’s economic prospects and energy crisis.

Sterling touched $1.1444 in early trading in Asia, taking the collapse in the pound’s value against the world’s reserve currency to 14 per cent so far this year.

Balmoral Castle, in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, where the Queen will meet Liz Truss. Credit:PA

The euro also slid against the rampant dollar, falling below 99 cents for the first time in almost 20 years.

Russia’s indefinite suspension to natural gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, blamed on a fault with a turbine, saw the Dutch TTF, the leading European benchmark, surge by almost a third as trading reopened this morning.

Johnson, who congratulated Truss on her victory in a series of tweets, is now set to move his family into a borrowed house in south London for the next six months while he gets used to his new life as a backbench Tory MP.

His friends told several media outlets he could finish a memoir of his time in Downing Street by Christmas.

Johnson, a former journalist, published a well-received account of Winston Churchill in 2014 also has a half-finished biography of William Shakespeare to complete.

The Telegraph reported that a speedy memoir, likely to attract an advance running to hundreds of thousands of pounds, would ensure his account of his time in politics is still relevant to the modern-day, fast moving political environment.

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