Who is Rishi Sunak?

When Rishi Sunak lost to Liz Truss in the first race for the leadership of the Conservative Party, few were surprised.

Many of those who were given the option to choose between the two candidates blamed Sunak for Boris Johnson’s downfall. They also preferred Trouss’s “optimistic” economic policy to Sunak’s gloomy assessment of financial prospects. While she promised generous tax deals, he argued that economic conditions would be tough and taxes could not be cut anytime soon. In fact, he warned, they might even have to get up.

A few weeks later, Sunak becomes Truss’ successor, reaffirming his criticism of the former prime minister’s financial plans. In the end, he was the only candidate to gain enough support to become the leader of his party, and therefore Prime Minister of Great Britain, partly out of the need to avoid another leadership struggle. The conservatives could not afford to continue to create an image of disunity and chaos.

Johnson briefly ran for the job before announcing that he did not feel it was right to return now. We may never know if he really had enough candidates to run as he claimed.

Penny Mordaunt was the more likely candidate, but an unlikely winner due to her lack of experience. His failure to garner enough support to run for the leadership vote cleared the way for Sunak.

Who is Rishi Sunak?

Sunak is a traditional conservative in many ways. He was born in Southampton and attended Winchester School, a highly respected and expensive private school. He studied at Oxford and Stanford before moving into the financial sector to work for Goldman Sachs. After graduation, he spent several years living and working in Silicon Valley, where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, an Indian billionaire.

Sunak did not enter Parliament until 2015, when he took the seat in Richmond in North Yorkshire, a very conservative part of the country, succeeding previous party leader William Hague. Until 2020, he was a big unknown outside the party: a new MP sneaking into parliament, impressing the people, but not in high office.

However, things are changing rapidly in politics and following the resignation of Sajid Javid in February 2020, a vacancy has opened up in the government. Johnson gave Sunak the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the most important government posts in the UK. His honeymoon in office was interrupted by the arrival of covid-19. Sunak found himself not only having to deal with the financial fallout from the global pandemic, but he was also tasked with appearing on television almost daily to inform the country of his decisions.

Despite the pressure, Sunak turned the situation into a personal success. He received widespread acclaim and praise for a furlough scheme in which the government paid wages to people who were unable to work due to the lockdown. Gone are the days when Sunak was accused of hesitating whether or not to implement such a plan.

Sunak’s popularity skyrocketed as the British felt that his actions had saved them from the worst financial consequences of the pandemic, but with the introduction of vaccines and a return to something resembling normal life, they began to wonder how the country was going to bounce back financially.

This coincided with huge challenges for the government. Johnson was found to have violated state alert rules and was fined by the police. Sunak was also fined, but he avoided criticism of Johnson because people seemed to sincerely believe that Sunak inadvertently ended up at an illegal party on his way to the meeting. This was the excuse that Johnson was selling at the time, but it was somehow more believable, coming from Sunak, a man who seemed to really go out of his way to help people rather than someone who seemed to defy the rules.

Revealing the time, Sunak wrote in his first statement after winning the leadership contest that his administration would be characterized by “honesty, professionalism and responsibility at all levels.”

More devastating was the revelation that Sunak’s wife was claiming non-resident tax status in order to pay less taxes. Prior to this scandal, Sunak had been talked about as Johnson’s most obvious successor, but the prospect of the treasury secretary allowing his family to evade tax rules put a stop to his candidacy.

Johnson’s fall, Trassa’s rise

In July 2022, Javid (who returned as health minister) and Sunak resigned at about the same time, prompting a wave of more resignations from their peers.

This decision eventually forced Johnson to resign, and the Tories have not yet forgiven or forgotten him by choosing the Truss when they were given the opportunity to vote in the summer. Meanwhile, party representatives in Parliament always favored Sunak, so when Trouss’s short term came to an end, they avoided asking questions and rallied around their preferred candidate.

Sunak has a lot of work ahead of him. The financial situation of the United Kingdom when he retired was already bad.

Two months of inactivity followed while the Conservatives chose a new leader. Then Truss’s mini-budget hit the economy. The global impact of the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, rising interest rates and concerns about the UK’s financial stability mean Sunak will have a difficult time in office.

He must unite his party, knowing that although he was the first choice of many, some preferred other candidates, including Johnson. Meanwhile, the Labor Party is at the top of the polls and possible solutions to the economic crisis will be painful and will matter.

How is Sunak going to lead the Conservatives to victory in the next general election scheduled for late 2024 (or early 2025 at the latest) if the electorate is feeling the effects of higher taxes, higher electricity bills and stagnant wages? ?

Their only hope is to distance themselves from the more damaging aspects of the conservative legacy, such as the current state of the National Health Service, industrial strikes, and chronically underfunded public services, and connect it to more positive aspects, such as high youth employment rates.

Given recent events, his victory after Truss’ demise was hardly a surprise. Perhaps the surprise is that someone wants to be prime minister right now.

Victoria Honeyman, Associate Professor of British Politics, University of Leeds

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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Fernando Carvallo selects information and shares his vision of national and international news. sign to our newsletter Things As They Are to read their daily columns.