Rishi Sunak will be the next tenant of Downing Street. At 42, this former finance expert will become the next head of the British government after the lightning step of Lis Truss. “Rishi Sunak has been elected leader of the Conservative Party,” announced Graham Brady, responsible for these issues within the ruling party for 12 years.
The fall of Liz Truss, who was his former opponent for the job over the summer, was compounded by the abandonment of Boris Johnson. The former British prime minister said he was ready to take the reins of the country after being ousted by his party nearly 50 days ago amid controversy and unpopularity in the country. He finally gave up on Sunday night to run in the internal elections.
“You cannot govern effectively if you do not have a united party in Parliament,” admitted the former mayor of London, who nevertheless assured that he had the necessary support to campaign.
Rishi Sunak’s final opponent was Penny Mordaunt, a former trade minister and leader of the Tories in the House of Commons under Liz Truss. However, she failed to rally the 100 supporters of members of the Conservative electoral college to obtain an internal election between the two adversaries.
“I want to straighten out our economy, unite our party and act for our country,” the new prime minister said on Sunday as he announced his candidacy, also promising “integrity, professionalism and responsibility.”
Youngest prime minister and first non-white
The grandson of immigrants of Indian origin, the son of a public health doctor father and a pharmacist mother, Rishi Sunak was born in 1980 before following the classic path of the British elite, passing through Oxford and Stanford. In the early 2010s, he became a very wealthy former banker whose personal fortune, combined with his wife’s, amounted to £730 million (more than €840 million), almost double that of the current royal couple .
He will now become Britain’s youngest prime minister in more than 200 years, beating by a year the previous record holder, David Cameron, who took office aged 43 in 2010. He will also become the first person not white to hold office.
Elected for the first time in 2015, at the age of 35 as a deputy for a rural constituency in the north of England, North Yorkshire, at the age of 35 he obtained the Undersecretary for Housing in 2018 under the government of Theresa Mayo. A way to reward him after his active campaign for Brexit in 2016.
In 2019, Boris Johnson takes the lead in the country and faces entanglement from his predecessor amid post-Brexit negotiations. He took the opportunity to move Rishi Sunak into the public accounts before appointing him Chancellor of the Exchequer, the British title of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Budget from 2020.
Ce post stratégique – il est notamment deuxième du gouvernement dans l’ordre protocolaire – est toutefois dépourvu d’une partie de ses prérogatives, at a moment où Downing Street veut prendre directly en charge les financial affairs dans le cadre des négociations de divorce avec l ‘European Union.
That does not prevent Rishi Sunak from gradually recovering ground in his field of action: during the health crisis, he rejects the State investing massively to support companies and proposes freezing retirement pensions.
In July, feeling that Boris Johnson was no longer in control of his majority after numerous scandals, he was one of many resigned ministers that precipitated his downfall. The latter launches the campaign for his succession for which Rishi Sunak is a candidate. Unlike Liz Truss, he is campaigning for a tax increase on high incomes to rebalance accounts and fund public services. After losing the internal elections, he did not return to government, which allowed him to criticize the prime minister’s “mini-budget” and not account for his balance.
Supporter of fiscal discipline
Known for favoring budgetary orthodoxy, Rishi Sunak is perceived by markets as a seraglio man who is not there to take risks but to bring financial stability to a UK wracked by political instability. The short-term objective: to raise the pound giving perspective to the large financial groups.
Rishi Sunak is also seen by much of his field as the one who will be able to bring back social peace: fighting back from Brexit, the UK is suffering from inflation of more than 10% in a year and exploding prices for energy have given rise to radical protest movements.
In force at the polls, the Labor opposition has meanwhile reiterated its call for early elections. “Les Tories sont sur le point de donner à Rishi Sunak les clés du pays sans qu’il n’ait dit un mot de la manière dont il gouvernerait”, tweeted the cheffe adjointe du Labor Angela Rayner, “personne n’a voté for this”.
Source: BFM TV
