Sunak wins race to become next British PM
Rishi Sunak has won the race to lead Britain’s Conservative Party clearing the path for him to become the next British prime minister.
“I can confirm we have received one valid nomination. Rishi Sunak is therefore elected as leader of the Conservative Party,” Chair of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, Graham Brady told party lawmakers.
Sunak, likely to be appointed prime minister by King Charles on Tuesday is tasked with steering a deeply divided country through an economic downturn set to leave millions of people poorer.
He told Conservative lawmakers in Westminster the party needed to tackle Britain’s economic challenges after political turbulence hit borrowing costs and pushed mortgage rates higher.
“It unites or dies”, he told his lawmakers in parliament shortly after the announcement, according to one present in the room.
Sunak told the party it faced an “existential crisis” and lawmakers should now focus on policy, not personalities.
He replaces Liz Truss, who only lasted 44 days before she resigned, needing to restore stability to a country reeling from years of political and economic turmoil and seeking to lead a party that has fractured along ideological lines.
Johnson, the face of the Brexit vote, led his party to a landslide victory in 2019, only to be driven out of office less than three years later after a series of scandals.
His successor Truss lasted just over six weeks before she quit over an economic policy that trashed the country’s economic credibility.
Also Read: Rishi Sunak is the Favourite to be Next UK PM
Penny Mordaunt, who lost out to Sunak, said his election was a “historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party,” she said. “Rishi has my full support.”
Other Conservative lawmakers agreed they needed to support the new leader. Asked if the party was ungovernable, former leader Iain Duncan Smith said it had been but that people were now relieved to have a new leader.
Sunak’s appointment is another first for Britain; one of the wealthiest politicians in Westminster, he will become the country’s first leader of color – and the country’s third prime minister in less than two months.
He also became Britain’s youngest prime minister in more than 200 years on Monday (October 24).
Sunak’s family migrated from India to Britain in the 1960s, a period when many people from Britain’s former colonies moved to the country to help it rebuild after World War Two.
After graduating from Oxford University, he went to Stanford University where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, whose father is Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, founder of outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd.
Zainab Sa’id
