GREEN MP Caroline Lucas has said that the country should “buckle up” for a “rough ride” after Liz Truss was elected to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

The MP for Brighton Pavilion predicted that her leadership would be a “disaster” for the country and criticised her approach to the environment and the cost of living crisis.

Ms Lucas said: “Just when we see the back of a law-breaking, Parliament-proroguing, office-abusing Prime Minister in Boris Johnson, he’s replaced by a climate-wrecking, handout-refusing, redistribution-opposing Brexit ideologue in Liz Truss.

“She’s campaigned as a right-wing ideologue and will govern as such, which is a disaster for all of us.”

The Green group on Brighton and Hove City Council have, meanwhile, launched a petition calling on the new Prime Minister to improve funding for public services.

Deputy leader of the council Hannah Clare said: “Liz Truss must make properly funding public services her first act as our new Prime Minister.

“As the cost of living rises, people need their help desperately. Yet the lack of funding from this Tory government makes this difficult for services to achieve.

“As a council, we want to do all we can to support people and have already made some key changes.

“This includes launching a cost of living crisis fund, increasing the pay for the lowest paid council staff and making the council tax reduction scheme even fairer for the lowest income households.

“We will continue to do all we can to make Brighton and Hove a fairer place.”

Liz Truss defeated rival Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 to win the leadership election and will replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister tomorrow.

In her victory speech, Ms Truss said: “I know that our beliefs resonate with the British people: our beliefs in freedom, in the ability to control your own life, in low taxes, in personal responsibility.

“I know that’s why people voted for us in such numbers in 2019 and as your party leader I intend to deliver what we promised those voters right across our great country.”

She also promised to deliver a plan to cut taxes and grow the economy and said that the Conservatives would secure a fifth term in office at the next general election in 2024.

Prime Minister Johnson and Ms Truss will fly to the royals’ summer residence at Balmoral to meet the Queen tomorrow for the formal handover of power.

Ahead of the announcement earlier today, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown Lloyd Russell-Moyle criticised the inaction from the government to tackle the cost of living crisis in the middle of the leadership election.

“We have spent months watching an ego contest in the Conservative Party when we needed a government to be getting a grip of the cost of living.”

Speaking last week, Peter Kyle, MP for Hove and shadow Northern Ireland secretary, criticised Liz Truss’s plans to cut taxes to address the cost of living crisis and said her plans would not address the issue that many residents are facing.

He said: “The ideas they have put forward, such as tax cuts, will fail residents of our city because they will not directly tackle the crisis in food, energy and petrol costs, which are soaring for working people.”