Rishi Sunak has gained the majority of votes and won the race to be the leader of the Conservative Party. He will become the next Prime Minister of Britain – the third this year. Sunak prevailed a chaotic three-day race for head of the Conservative party, making him the first person of colour to become prime minister in British history.
After replacing the short-lived prime minister of the U.K., Liz Truss, Sunak won the contest for the head of the Conservative Party against Penny Mordaunt. Mordaunt withdrew after failing to reach the threshold of 100 nominating votes from Conservative lawmakers. Know more about the first Indian-origin Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
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Who Is Rishi Sunak?
Rishi Sunak is the son of Indian immigrant parents, from a Punjabi descent, who immigrated to the United Kingdom from East Africa, in 1960s. He was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England on 12 May, 1980. His education was at Winchester College, and he read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford. The 42-year-old also gained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar.
It’s there at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys. Sunak and Murty are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022. After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms: The Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners.
At the 2015 general election, Sunak was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond in North Yorkshire, succeeding William Hague. He supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. In 2018, during Theresa May’s second government, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government. He voted three times in favour of May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. After May resigned, he supported Boris Johnson’s campaign to become Conservative leader.
After the appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Sunak was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He, then replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle. As Chancellor, Sunak was prominent in the government’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact. These include the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out schemes.
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Sunak Became UK’s First Indian-Origin Prime Minister
Rishi Sunak defeated the centrist politician Penny Mordaunt to become the first Indian-origin Prime Minister of UK. Mordaunt failed to get enough backing from lawmakers to enter the ballot and lost the battle to Sunak. He won the race to lead the Conservative Party, leaving him to face a range of dire economic challenges. The former chancellor of the Exchequer promised to bring his “party and country together.”
Liz Truss‘s failed experiment in trickle-down economics rattled financial markets and badly damaged Britain’s fiscal reputation. People are expecting that the impending need for an economic reform will galvanize Sunak to take action. The leader of the conservative party will now require his exceptionally adroit political and economical side to turn the face of Britain from a daunting recession.
Boris Johnson’s decision to pull out of the race cleared a path for Sunak, who had challenged Truss last summer, but lost to her in a vote of the party’s members. With him being the only surviving candidate this time, he was not subjected to another vote of the members. Now, he will become Britain’s third prime minister in seven weeks, the youngest in two centuries and the first person of Indian origin to achieve its highest elected office.
A former investment banker, he will also be one of the wealthiest people ever to occupy 10 Downing Street. “There is no doubt we face profound economic challenges,” Mr. Sunak said in brief, somewhat stiff, remarks after his victory. “We now need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring my party and country together.”
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