Rishi Sunak has won the race to become the leader of the Conservative Party and will become the next Prime Minister of Britain – third this year
Rishi Sunak has won the race to become the leader of the Conservative Party and will become the next Prime Minister of Britain – third this year
Rishi Sunki Has won the race to become leader of the Conservative Party and will become Britain’s next prime minister – third this year.
The former Treasury chief will be Britain’s first leader of colour, and will face the task of stabilizing the party and the country one at a time. economic and political turmoil,
His only rival, Ms. Penny Mordaunt, accepted and withdrew on Monday.
As leader of the governing party, he would take over as Prime Minister. Liz Truss, who left last week After 45 turbulent days in the office.
Mr Rishi Sunak ran for Britain’s top job and lost. Now he has one more shot – and a chance to say “I told you that.”
Ms Liz Truss was the runner-up in a contest to replace scandal-hit Boris Johnson as Britain’s former Treasury chief, Conservative Party leader and prime minister. But Ms Truss left after a turbulent 45-day periodAnd Mr Johnson has given up on the comeback effort, making Mr Sunak a strong favorite to eventually take over the office he left in less than two months.
Winning the Conservative leadership contest would be retaliation for Mr Sunak, who warned in a previous campaign that Truss’s tax-cutting economic plans were reckless and would lead to destruction. And so he did.
Truss resigned last week after a package of tax cuts shook financial markets, eroding the value of the pound and eroding his authority.
If he wins, he will be the first British leader of color and the first Hindu to hold the top post. At 42, he would also be the youngest prime minister in more than 200 years, a political prodigy whose youthful looks, sharp suit, and smooth, confident manner led him to be dubbed a “dish sage” by the British media.
To win, Mr Sunak will still have to overcome accusations from opponents that he was a turncoat for leaving Mr Johnson’s government as it was set amid morality scandals. The nearly simultaneous resignations of Mr Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid on 5 July triggered a chain reaction. Within 48 hours, about 50 members of the government had stepped down, and Mr Johnson was forced to step down.
Mr Sunak portrayed this as principle, saying he wanted to repair the “break of trust” in politics. He also accused Truss of offering “fairy tales” by promising immediate tax cuts when he felt curbing rising inflation was a major priority.
Mr Sunak said in an interview to the BBC: “I would prefer to lose by fighting for what I think is right for our country, and true to my values, rather than winning on false promises.”
Rishi Sunak was born in Southampton on the south coast of England in 1980 to Indian-origin parents, who were both born in East Africa. He grew up in a middle-class family, his father a family doctor and his mother a pharmacist, and says he has inherited his hardworking ethos.
During the campaign, he said, “I grew up working in a shop, delivering medicines.” “I worked as a waiter in an Indian restaurant down the street.”
He describes how his parents saved him to send him to Winchester College, one of the most expensive and exclusive boarding schools in Britain.
There he mingled with the aristocracy. Rivals recently dug up a clip from a 2001 television documentary about the class system in which the 21-year-old Sunak said that his “friends who are elite, I have friends from the upper class, I have friends, you know, The working class – well, not the working class.”
After high school, Rishi Sunak studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University – the degree of choice for future prime ministers – then received an MBA at Stanford University.
He worked as a hedge fund manager for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and lived in the US, where he met his wife, Ms. Akshata Murthy. They have two daughters.
Returning to Britain, Mr Sunak was elected to parliament in 2015 for the secured Tory seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. In Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, he supported leaving the European Union – a risky career move, as it went against the policy of the Conservative government.
When “Leave” unexpectedly won, Mr. Sunak’s career took off. He served in several junior ministerial positions before being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer – the head of the Treasury – by Mr Johnson in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit.
An effortlessly low-tax, small-state politician who idolizes former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, yet has invested billions in government money to keep people and businesses afloat during the pandemic. His temporary program, which paid the wages of millions of workers when it was temporarily closed, made him the most popular member of the government – a position he lit up with social media messages that rivals and critics said were his own. More emphasis was placed on the brand. Of the government
But Mr. Sunak has faced his ups and downs over the years. Critics said a campaign to get people to eat in restaurants after the easing of lockdown restrictions in the summer of 2020 contributed to another wave of COVID-19.
Others have said that Mr. Sunak’s family’s vast wealth and Silicon Valley past left him out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people.
He also faced questions about his finances and that of his wife. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Ms Murthy is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Indian tech giant Infosys, and the couple is worth 730 million pounds ($877 million).
In April 2022, it emerged that Murthy did not pay UK tax on his foreign income. The practice was legal, but it looked bad when Mr. Sunak was raising taxes for millions of Britons. Mr Sunak was also criticized for remaining on his US green card, indicating his intention to immigrate to the US until two years after becoming Britain’s finance minister.
Mr Sunak was cleared of wrongdoing, but the revelations still hurt. Police fined Johnson and dozens of others, along with dozens of others, for attending a party at the prime minister’s office in 2020 that broke coronavirus lockdown rules. Outrage at those parties contributed to Johnson’s downfall at a time when Britons were forced to stay home. Mr Sunak has said he participated unintentionally and briefly.
In her first leadership campaign, she portrayed herself as a candidate for big decisions and fiscal integrity, criticized Truss’s plans to lower taxes and increase borrowing, and vowed to get inflation under control.
It is now harder than ever.