LONDON — Liz Truss was set to become Britain’s next prime minister on Tuesday after arriving at Queen Elizabeth II’s Balmoral estate in Scotland, shortly after Boris Johnson met the monarch to formally offer his resignation.The queen will ask Truss, the Conservative Party leader, during their audience to become Britain’s new leader as the country faces an acute cost-of-living crisis.Truss, 47, takes office a day after the ruling party’s 172,000 members elected her as their leader, putting her in line to be named prime minister in Tuesday’s carefully choreographed ceremony at the queen’s summer residence.Truss is expected to make her first speech Tuesday afternoon as leader of a nation of 67 million people anxious about soaring energy bills and a looming winter of recession and labor unrest. Those problems have festered for the past two months, because Johnson had no authority to make major policy decisions after announcing his plan to step down in early July.This is the first time in the queen’s 70-year reign that the handover of power is taking place at Balmoral, rather than Buckingham Palace in London. The ceremony was moved to Scotland to provide certainty about the schedule because the 96-year-old queen has experienced problems getting around that have forced palace officials to make decisions about her travel on a day-to-day basis.Speaking outside his Downing Street office before heading to Scotland, Johnson said his three-year tenure had left Britain with the economic strength to help people weather the energy crisis. He signed off with his typically colorful language.“I am like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function,” Johnson said. “I will now be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific.’’Johnson, 58, became prime minister three years ago after his predecessor, Theresa May, failed to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union. Johnson later won an 80-seat majority in Parliament with the promise to “get Brexit done.”But he was forced out of office by a series of scandals that culminated in the resignation of dozens of Cabinet secretaries and lower-level officials in early July. He alluded to that downfall in his leaving remarks, saying he was handing over the baton to Truss in “what has unexpectedly become a relay race.”
While many observers expect Johnson to attempt a political comeback, he offered Truss his backing and compared himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator who relinquished power and returned to his farm to live in peace.“Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plow,” he said. “And I will be offering this government nothing but the most fervent support.”