Rishi Sunak said on Monday he was “honoured and honored” to be elected leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, a role that will see him become Britain’s third prime minister 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 had published a statement of concession a few minutes earlier.
“Rishi has my full support,” he said.
LOOK | Rishi Sunak announced as the next leader of the Conservative Party:
Rishi Sunak wins the race to become the next British Prime Minister
Former UK Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, 42, has won the race to become leader of the Conservative Party and Britain’s next prime minister after his only rival, Penny Mordaunt, caved and quit.
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.
Sunak in a brief speech mentioned the “profound economic challenge” facing the country, which includes rising energy and food prices, and a looming recession.
“Now we need stability and unity, and I will make it my top priority to bring our party and our country together,” he said.
New Conservative Party leader and incoming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was celebrated by MPs outside party headquarters in London on Monday afternoon. (Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)
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 will ask him to form a government and become prime minister in a handover from Truss on 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 contested the leadership in the summer but saw Truss finish with the most votes, boosted by support from grassroots party members.
Truss pledged his “full support” for Sunak, and Theresa May, Conservative prime minister from 2016 to 2019, applauded the choice.
The Conservative Party has been in power since 2010 and its turmoil in recent months is fueling demands from opposition parties for a national election, led by opposition leader Keir Starmer.
Starmer’s Labor Party tweeted a video of Sunak with the terse: “No one voted for this.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said “Tory MPs have installed another out-of-touch prime minister without giving you a voice”, while Scottish National Party leader Ian Blackford opined that “the Tories they cannot impose a third prime minister without an 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.
Sunak’s great wealth criticized
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 past in Silicon Valley 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.