Japan set for first female PM after Sanae Takaichi wins leadership race

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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. 

The LDP’s loss of its majority in both houses of parliament under Ishiba means that Takaichi will be forced to seek the support of one or more opposition parties to be confirmed as prime minister in a vote scheduled for October 15.

The LDP, which has ruled Japan for all but a handful of the past 70 years, has a fragile hold on power through its coalition with the smaller Komeito party and has made ad hoc deals with opposition parties to pass legislation and budgets.

The party’s slow-burning crisis has been brought to a head by the defection of its traditional supporters to small populist parties as inflation, demographics and immigration have risen to the forefront of public concerns.

Takaichi, a nationalist who favours tighter restrictions on immigration and commands strong support among the LDP’s rank and file, said after the first round of voting that she had been driven to seek leadership by a sense of urgency and the need to turn people’s anxieties about their daily lives into hope.

Wearing a royal blue suit that recalled her idol Thatcher, she told the party following her clear victory in the run-off vote that all members must work “like horses”.

“For my part, I will be abandoning the concept of work-life balance,” she vowed. “Work! Work! Work! Work! Work!”