A boulevard stands in front of this 42-year-old man who looks like an ideal son-in-law. Beaten at the beginning of September by Liz Truss, the conservative Rishi Sunak seems very close to Downing Street after the withdrawal from the race of Boris Johnson. A victory would make him the UK’s first non-white head of government. Without his former boss facing him, and with another candidate, Penny Mordaunt, left behind in terms of sponsorships, the former finance minister has every chance of being appointed Prime Minister as of Monday, October 24. But according to his relatives, interviewed by The Times, the former minister “does not take anything for granted. Rishi will continue to speak to his colleagues”, in order to determine “the best way to unify the party and move the country forward”. .
After the resignation of Liz Truss last Thursday, after 44 days in office, the former investment banker returned to the front of the stage with credibility at the highest. For his supporters, his main asset lies in his budgetary prudence, because of which he had been deemed too centrist and too smooth. But in the meantime, Liz Truss was carried away by her fiscal policy which set the market on fire. What to smile the ex-chancellor of the Exchequer who had warned the conservatives during the campaign this summer that the program of Truss was a “fairy tale” and that his massive tax cuts would lead to an increase in the cost of loan.
For his supporters, Rishi Sunak’s message during the previous Downing Street campaign on the need for economic prudence to fight inflation showed that he is the man for the job. But he was often accused of being a technocrat out of touch with the people. Last August, the beef-neutral (due to his Hindu religion) bragged about enjoying McDonald’s breakfast wraps, after being photographed at one of its restaurants where “he again seemed to have a bit of trouble making a contactless card payment,” added British media outlet The Guardian. Bad luck, the mentioned product disappeared from the fast food chain’s British menu almost two and a half years ago.
And facing Liz Truss, he paid a high price for having slammed the door of the Johnson government in early July, followed by around sixty colleagues. He was accused by part of the base of having betrayed Boris Johnson, with whom he remained at loggerheads.
Born on May 12, 1980 in Southampton, on the south coast of England, Rishi Sunak is the eldest of three children and the son of a general practitioner in the public health system and a pharmacist. Born in India or of Indian origin, his grandparents emigrated from East Africa to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. “I was brought up in the pride of England”, explained Rishi Sunak in an interview river on the BBC, in October 2019. However, Rishi Sunak very quickly rose to the elite by attending Winchester College, a very chic boarding school for boys. He then studied politics, philosophy and economics at the prestigious universities of Oxford, England, and Stanford, USA. His time at the investment bank Goldman Sachs completes a brilliant CV.
Rishi Sunak was elected Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (north of England) in 2015. Barely five years later, he took up the coveted position of finance minister at the age of 39, shortly before the start of the pandemic. This early Brexit supporter gained popularity by doling out billions of pounds in state aid during the Covid-19 crisis. “Sunak’s problem is that for the past two years, he has not been able to travel to the regions because of the pandemic”, explained last July to L’Express Anna Soubry, former conservative minister and pro- European who left the Tories in 2019 on the question of Brexit.
But his fortune, amassed during his career in finance and through his marriage to Akshata Murty, daughter of an Indian multi-billionaire, sometimes upsets, while the British tighten their belts. By way of parade, the father of two children willingly tells his family history, a success story as the conservatives like them. “My family emigrated here 60 years ago. (My mother) ran the local pharmacy in Southampton. That’s where I grew up, in the shop, delivering medicine. I worked as a waiter at the Indian restaurant at the end of the street”, he said during the last internal campaign. “I am here thanks to the hard work, sacrifice and love of my parents”. Today, this Star Wars fan is no doubt hoping to reach the heights.
