Rishi Sunak is set to become the UK’s latest Prime Minister this week, replacing the country’s shortest-serving leader Liz Truss.
He will become the third person to lead the country in seven weeks, and the fifth since 2016.
Sunak defeated centrist politician Penny Mordaunt, who failed to get enough backing from lawmakers, while the former prime minister Boris Johnson, withdrew from the contest saying he could no longer unite the party.
His victory is seen by some as a victory for diversity. He will become the first Hindu and the first person of color to become Britain’s Prime Minister. At the age of 42, he is also the youngest person to take the office in more than 200 years.
Sunak has been declared the new leader of the Conservative Party by the head of the 1922 Committee of Conservative legislators, placing him on course to be the UK’s next prime minister.
Although Sunak has been named the new leader of the Conservative Party, he does not automatically become the UK’s prime minister.
For that to happen, Prime Minister Liz Truss will first have to visit King Charles III to formally stand down. Charles will then meet with Sunak and ask him to form a new government.
Truss, the outgoing and shortest-serving British prime minister, has congratulated Rishi Sunak on winning the race to replace her. Truss said Sunak has her “full support.”
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has congratulated Rishi Sunak on becoming prime minister and called for an early general election. “That he becomes the first British Asian to become PM is a genuinely significant moment” she said.
However, Rishi Sunak has ruled out early general election after winning the race to be UK’s next prime minister.
Opposition Labour Party MP Angela Rayner has questioned Sunak’s appointment as the Conservative Party’s new leader, saying he has “no mandate, no answers and no ideas”, and called for the public to have their say at a general election.
Sunak, who is considered a centrist and pragmatic politician, studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University and then got 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 also one of the wealthiest politicians in Westminster. British people have raised concerns that Sunak and his family’s vast wealth put him out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people.