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 the confirmed support of more than 100 lawmakers, the number needed to stand for election, and his supporters claimed he has the support of more than half of the 357 Conservative lawmakers in Parliament.
“I can confirm that we have received a valid nomination and Rishi Sunak is therefore elected as leader of the Conservative Party,” party chief Graham Brady said.
Mourdant a few minutes earlier published a statement of concession.
“Rishi has my full support,” he said.
Truss announced his resignation last week. Truss’s short tenure of just over six weeks was marked by shock over the government’s mini-budget, which hit British markets, and internal party dissension that led to the exit of the cabinet and MPs expressing the lack of confidence in Truss.
—@PennyMordaunt
Sunak, the former head of the Treasury under Johnson, will become Britain’s first colored leader and the first Hindu to hold the top job. At 42, he will also be Britain’s youngest prime minister in more than 200 years.
King Charles III will ask him to form a government. He will become prime minister in a handover from Truss later on Monday or Tuesday.
Johnson’s comeback is not in the cards
Johnson dramatically dropped out of the race on Sunday night, ending a short-lived and high-profile attempt to return to the job of prime minister from which he was ousted just over three months ago amid ethics scandals.
Johnson spent the weekend trying to drum up support from fellow Tory lawmakers after flying back from a vacation in the Caribbean. On Sunday afternoon he said he had amassed the support of 102 colleagues. But he was far behind Sunak in support, saying he had concluded that “you can’t govern effectively if you don’t have a united party in Parliament”.
Boris Johnson, seen as prime minister on June 7 with Sunak in the background, failed to muster the support needed for an unlikely comeback. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
Sunak had helped bring down the Johnson government in the summer with his resignation. In a series of tweets on Sunday, he praised Johnson for delivering Brexit, the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine and his support for Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.
Sunak lost to Truss in the last Tory election, but now his party and the country seem eager for a safe pair of hands to deal with rising energy and food prices, and a recession that ‘approx. The politician steered the economy through the coronavirus pandemic, winning praise for his financial support for laid-off workers and closed businesses.
He has promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability” if he forms a government, a nod to the growing desire for a leader who can address the country’s problems.
The turmoil in the Conservative Party is fueling demands from opposition parties for a national election. Under Britain’s parliamentary system, there is not required to be one until the end of 2024, although the government has the power to call one earlier.
great wealth
Sunak studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University and later earned an MBA at Stanford University.
He worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as a hedge fund manager and lived in the United States, where he met his wife, Akshata Murty. They have two daughters.
Sunak is pictured with his wife Akshata Murty at a gala event in London on February 9. A few weeks later, Murty was found to be paying no UK tax on his overseas earnings. (Tristan Fewings/Reuters)
Returning to Britain, Sunak was elected to Parliament for the safe Conservative 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 held 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.
Sunak has had his ups and downs over the years. Critics said a drive to get people to eat in restaurants after lockdown restrictions were eased in the summer of 2020 contributed to another wave of COVID-19.
Others have said that Sunak’s family’s vast wealth and Silicon Valley past put him out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people.
He also faced questions about his and his wife’s finances. Murty is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Indian tech giant Infosys, and the couple are worth 730 million pounds (C$1.12 billion), according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
In April 2022, it emerged that Murty was not paying UK tax on his overseas earnings. The practice was legal, but it seemed wrong at a time when Sunak was raising taxes for millions of Britons. Sunak was also criticized for keeping his US green card, which signifies an intention to settle in the US, for two years after becoming UK finance minister.
Sunak was cleared of wrongdoing, but the revelations still hurt. He was fined by police, along with Johnson and dozens of others, for attending a party at the prime minister’s office in 2020 that broke coronavirus lockdown rules. Outrage over these holidays at a time when Britons were forced to stay at home contributed to Johnson’s downfall. Sunak has said he attended briefly and unintentionally.