After the withdrawal of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak very close to the post of Prime Minister

Rishi Sunak has never been closer to Downing Street. Beaten at the beginning of September by Liz Truss, the conservative has no obstacle in front of him this time 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, Rishi Sunak, 42-year-old former finance minister, therefore has every chance of being appointed Prime Minister as of Monday. After Liz Truss resigned Thursday after 44 days in office, he returned to the front of the stage with credibility at the highest.

Fiscal prudence as an asset

Liz Truss was carried away by her fiscal policy and her unpopularity. But Rishi Sunak had warned the conservatives during the campaign this summer that Truss’ program was a “fairy tale”. For his supporters, his message during the previous campaign for Downing Street showed that he is the man for the job. His budgetary prudence, because of which he was deemed too centrist and too smooth, is now reassuring.

Already last summer, this Conservative was the preferred candidate of the “Tory” deputies. But he was often accused of being a technocrat out of touch with the people. And facing Liz Truss, he paid 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 the former Prime Minister, with whom he remained at loggerheads.

Rishi Sunak was elected MP for Yorkshire (north of England) in 2015. Barely five years later, he took on the coveted position of finance minister at the age of 39, shortly before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. . This early Brexit supporter has gained popularity by doling out billions of pounds in state aid during the health crisis. 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.

Success story

Faced with these criticisms, he willingly tells his family story, a success story as conservatives like them. Born May 12, 1980 in Southampton, 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 descent, his grandparents emigrated from East Africa to the UK in the 1960s.

Rishi Sunak, however, 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 universities of Oxford, England, and Stanford, USA. And before entering politics, he worked in finance, particularly at Goldman Sachs, and founded his own investment company.