Sanae Takaichi is primed to become Japan’s first-ever female prime minister after the country’s ruling Liberal Democratic party elected her as its new president in a tightly contested leadership race.
Takaichi, 64, a hardline conservative who models herself on former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, prevailed in a second-round party vote against her closest rival Shinjiro Koizumi on Saturday.
A political veteran, Takaichi will immediately replace outgoing prime minister Shigeru Ishiba as head of the LDP. But she inherits a ruling party in crisis, with rising geopolitical threats and Japan’s critically important relationship with the US at its most strained in decades.
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