Truss, 47, became the shortest-ruling Prime Minister, last week, when she resigned her positions as the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister after roundly failing on the mandate for which she was elected.
Monday’s election of Rishi Sunak is a huge landmark in a career that seemed over about seven short weeks ago. But the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the United Kingdom’s title for its chief finance minister, made a monumental rebound via a high-stakes gamble.
Sunak, who now holds the trophy of the first man of colour to occupy the 10 Downing Street, as Prime Minister, had, at the peak of the turbulence that swept away former PM Boris Johnson, launched a vitriolic attack on Johnson’s Premiership, putting himself forward as his successor.
But Sunak failed in that bid. He lost to Liz Truss and subsequently retreated to the parliamentary back benches. However, on Monday, fate smiled on the politician/business tycoon. He made a rebound and saw off other contenders to the seat, having secured the support of 100 Conservative members of Parliament, the mandatory threshold set by the party for potential candidates.He was the only leadership hopeful to scale the hurdle.
Sunak was the last person standing after his rivals – former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt – fell by the wayside.
As Sunak emerged from the political wilderness on Monday, to become the United Kingdom’s first Prime Minister of colour and at 42, the youngest person to take the office in more than 200 years, compatriots in his native India and its diaspora went into a frenzy of celebration, and applauded the milestone in British politics as ‘a testament to the country’s multiculturalism.’
Sunak’s victory in the Conservative Party’s leadership contest on Monday coincided with Diwali, the most important festival of the year for Hindus.
Washington Post reports that in Britain, Sunak’s heritage was being celebrated as “going against the grain of deeply racial hierarchies of 21st-century Britain,” said Avinash Paliwal, a lecturer in diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies. But in India, he added, “it’ll be celebrated and feed into the popular narrative of rising Indian — even Hindu — global power.”
“It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to serve the party I love, and to be able to give back to the country I owe so much to,” Sunak said.
“The United Kingdom is a great country, but there is no doubt we face a profound economic challenge,” he added. “We need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together.”
CNN reports that Sunak first publicly declared on Sunday morning that he would be standing in the contest. Other than that brief statement, he made no big pitch for the leadership this time round.
In the last contest, over the summer, he was widely seen as the more moderate of the two candidates. Compared to Truss, he took a less ideological line on matters like Brexit and the economy. (Unlike Truss, a remainer-turned hardline Brexiteer, Sunak voted for the UK to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum.)
Like Truss, Sunak promised a tough approach to illegal immigration and vowed to expand the government’s controversial Rwanda immigration policy.
Sunak, whose parents came to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s, is of Indian descent. His father was a local doctor while his mother ran a pharmacy in southern England, something Sunak says gave him his desire to serve the public.
“British Indian is what I tick on the census, we have a category for it. I am thoroughly British, this is my home and my country, but my religious and cultural heritage is Indian, my wife is Indian. I am open about being a Hindu,” Sunak said in an interview with Business Standard in 2015.
He will be the first Hindu to become British prime minister, securing the position on Diwali, the festival of lights that marks one of the most important days of the Hindu calendar. Sunak himself made history in 2020 when he lit Diwali candles outside 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the UK chancellor.
He has faced challenges over his elite background, having studied at the exclusive Winchester College, Oxford and Stanford universities. He is known for his expensive taste in fashion and has worked for banks and hedge funds, including Goldman Sachs.
Below are different faces of the incoming British Prime Minister. (Photos courtesy of CNN).
