Rishi Sunak will become first British prime minister of colour. He’ll also be the youngest one in more than 200 years.
Rishi Sunak has won the race to be leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and will become the country’s next prime minister — the third this year.
Sunak emerged over former leader Boris Johnson and Penny Mourdaunt in the truncated process to replace Liz Truss as leader. He was the only candidate with confirmed support from more than 100 lawmakers, the number needed to run in the election, with his backers claiming he has been endorsed by more than half of the 357 Conservative lawmakers in Parliament.
Truss announced her resignation last week. Truss’s short tenure of just over six weeks was marked by shock over the government’s mini-budget, which roiled British markets, and internal party dissension leading to cabinet departures and backbenchers expressing a lack of confidence in Truss.
Sunak, the former Treasury chief under Johnson, will become Britain’s first leader of colour and the first Hindu to take the top job. At 42, he’ll also be the youngest British prime minister in more than 200 years.
Sunak then lost out to Truss in the last Conservative election, but his party and the country now appear eager for a safe pair of hands to tackle soaring energy and food prices, and a looming recession. The politician steered the economy through the coronavirus pandemic, winning praise for his financial support for laid-off workers and shuttered businesses.
He has promised « integrity, professionalism and accountability » if he forms a government — a nod to the growing to desire for a leader who can tackle the country’s problems.
The Conservative Party turmoil is fuelling demands from the opposition parties for a national election. Under Britain’s parliamentary system, there does not need to be one until the end of 2024, though the government has the power to call one sooner.
Wealthy
Sunak studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University and then got an MBA at Stanford University.
He worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as a hedge fund manager and lived in the U.S., where he met his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of the billionaire founder of Indian tech giant Infosys. The couple, who have two daughters, is worth 730 million pounds ($1.12 billion Cdn), according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Returning to Britain, Sunak was elected to Parliament for the safe Tory seat of Richmond in Yorkshire in 2015. In Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, he supported leaving the European Union.
When « Leave » voters prevailed in the referendum, Sunak’s career took off. He served in several junior ministerial posts before being appointed chancellor of the exchequer — head of the Treasury — by Johnson in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit.
(From CBC News)
