London | Boris Johnson becomes the next British prime minister on Wednesday afternoon (early Thursday AEST) after winning a landslide victory in the month-long Conservative Party leadership contest against Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Mr Johnson's first steps are to move into Downing Street - delivering a headland speech on the way in - and spend the early hours of Thursday (AEST) appointing a cabinet, empowered by having bagged two-thirds of the roughly 139,000 votes cast.