After winning the vote of the majority of the members of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak will be the new British Prime Minister. Thus, he becomes the seventh politician to take office in 25 years in the European country.
In a personal and political twist, he won the post just under two months after losing a similar race to Liz Truss, the now former prime minister who resigned after her economic plan fiasco.
His victory was also nailed by the retreat of his main adversary. Penny Mordaunt, secretary of defense under Theresa May, was unable to muster the necessary support to continue in the race. Boris Johnson, a former prime minister who fell from grace after a series of scandals, even attempted a comeback, but he also dropped out of the race on Sunday.
In theory, Sunak was elected as the new leader of the party and, in practice, to lead the United Kingdom at a time of inflation and a serious energy crisis.
Of Indian descent, Sunak, 42, is a relatively new name in British politics. He was elected to Parliament for the first time only in 2014. In the 2016 referendum, he supported Brexit, the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, made official by his party colleague Boris Johnson in January 2020. In 2019, when Boris arrived at the power, Sunak was appointed to the position of Secretary of the Treasury and, in the following year, assumed the portfolio of Finances of the government.
Sunak begins his government on the eve of the “winter catastrophe”, which is what the British are calling the consequences of the energy crisis caused by the Ukrainian War. Electricity bills that used to cost an average of £2,000 a year are expected to jump to £3,600. The 80% increase, combined with inflation, could cause deaths and suffering in the second half of the year, with families being forced to choose between cooking or heating the house, in average temperatures between 4°C and 9°C.
In June, UK inflation surpassed an annual average of 10% for the first time since 1982, when the countries were ruled by the also conservative Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). In the campaign, Sunak gave some hints about what she intends to do, mentioning financial aid to lower-income families.
At the start of the pandemic, Sunak’s popularity soared, when it fell to him to announce a £350bn bailout package. But the good wave was short-lived. Still in 2020, she was shaken when he went to a party in Downing Street, alongside Boris, violating the rules of the lockdown imposed to contain the advance of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sunak is one of the richest politicians in the UK. His parents are a doctor and a pharmacist, and their son even worked as a waiter at an Indian restaurant during his summer vacations. He studied at Stanford, USA, where he met and married Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian tech billionaire. Akshata owns 0.91% of his father’s company, and a small percentage of it is worth something like £750m (£4.5bn). The couple has two daughters.
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