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Rishi Sunak has become the new UK Prime Minister after meeting King Charles III at Buckingham Palace.
Sunak is now the UK’s 57th prime minister after being asked to form a government by King Charles III. He is the third prime minister this year and will enter Downing Street as the youngest PM in two centuries.
Sunak will be making a statement soon after he arrives at 10 Downing Street.
Meanwhile, outgoing Prime Minister Liz Truss has officially become the shortest-serving PM in UK history after she was forced to step down just 45 days into office.
On Monday, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak became the Conservative Party leader less than two months after he lost to Liz Truss in the Tory leadership race.
Sunak’s change in fate was triggered by the resignation of Truss after high-profile sackings and resignations in her Cabinet, following a heavily criticised mini-budget that left the UK pound tumbling.
Truss’ ascent to power was paved by the Tory leadership crisis following Boris Johnson’s resignation in July, after a series of resignations of cabinet members, who protested against his scandal-plagued leadership.
In a short farewell speech earlier, she defended her legacy of trying to push through tax cuts and said leaders needed to be bold.
She called for lowering taxes and delivering growth, Truss said, “We need to take advantage of our Brexit freedoms to do things differently. This means delivering more freedom for our own citizens and restoring power for our democratic institutions.”
“It means lower taxes so people can keep more of the money they earn. And it means delivering growth that will lead to more job security, higher wages and more opportunities for our children and grandchildren,” she added.
Truss said that her government had acted “urgently and decisively” to help hard-working families.
She said she had helped thousands of businesses to avoid bankruptcy, and taken back energy independence so we’re “no longer reliant on malign foreign powers.”
Sunak will be the UK’s third leader in seven weeks after winning a Tory leadership contest triggered by Truss stepping down.
After being selected by Tory MPs on Monday, he warned the country faced a “profound economic challenge.”
Sunak ruled out an early general election, despite calls from Labour, the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
Sunak was born in Southampton to parents of Punjabi Indian descent who migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s. He was educated at Winchester College, read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, and gained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar.
While studying at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys.
Sunak and Murty are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022. After graduating, Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms the Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners.
Sunak was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond in North Yorkshire at the 2015 general election, succeeding William Hague. Sunak supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on EU membership.
He was appointed to Theresa May’s second government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in the 2018 reshuffle. He voted three times in favour of May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement.
After May resigned, Sunak supported Boris Johnson’s campaign to become Conservative leader. After Johnson was elected and appointed Prime Minister, he appointed Sunak as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle.
As Chancellor, Sunak was prominent in the government’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, including the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out schemes.
He resigned as chancellor on 5 July 2022, followed by Johnson’s resignation amid a government crisis. Sunak stood in the Conservative party leadership election to replace Johnson, and lost the members’ vote to Liz Truss.
Following Truss’s resignation amid another government crisis, Sunak was elected unopposed as Leader of the Conservative Party. Sunak becomes the first British South Asian, the first non-white person and the richest person to have held the office.
Rishi Sunak appointed new Prime Minister of United Kingdom by King Charles III
