Tzipi Livni, who currently serves as foreign minister and vice prime minister, has long been Ehud Olmert’s principal rival inside the centrist Kadima party. Now, after her triumph in the party primaries on Wednesday night, the prime minister will finally have to make way for her.

The 50-year old Ms Livni has few ideological differences with her party boss, but the two clashed sharply over Mr Olmert’s refusal to resign in the wake of Israel’s botched war in Lebanon in 2006. Ms Livni, a former operative for the Mossad, Israel’s secret service, publicly called on the prime minister to step down last year, but the two ended up patching up their differences and she remained in office. In November last year, Mr Olmert appointed her to lead the peace talks with the Palestinian Authority – a task that has given Ms Livni a high profile internationally but that has yielded few results so far.