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Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is to become the first person of Indian origin to become Prime Minister of the UK after rival Penny Mordaunt withdrew from the race at the last minute.
Sunak was announced as the winner of a snap leadership competition called by the UK’s ruling Conservative Party after Liz Truss resigned as Prime Minister following turbulent market reaction to her economic plan.
Mordaunt announced in a Tweet at the 11th hour that she was withdrawing from the leadership contest, and Chairman of the 1922 Committee Graham Brady announced Sunak's victory.
Sunak received the backing of more than half of his party’s MPs despite considerable divisions, including resentment about his perceived role in the ousting of another predecessor, Boris Johnson, under whom he served as Chancellor, and who increased the Conservatives’ majority in 2019.
Only last month, Sunak was defeated by Truss in a leadership competition, which took place after Johnson resigned following a series of scandals.
Sunak is the UK’s fourth new PM since the resignation of David Cameron, who decided to step down after the UK’s Brexit vote in 2016, despite the fact that the UK has five-year parliaments, during which one leader often serves for the duration, and sometimes for more than one term.
Johnson himself withdrew from the leadership late last night despite claiming to have crossed the threshold of 100 MP backers required to receive a place on a ballot decided by the Conservative Party’s 170,000 members.
Sunak was appointed leader as the only candidate to receive the public backing of more than 100 MPs.
Who is Rishi Sunak?
Educated at top private school Winchester College, Sunak is the country’s first person of Indian or South Asian origin to rise to the highest office in the land.
He is not however considered to be the first from one of the UK’s ethnic minorities to win the top job. Benjamin Disraeli, who served under Queen Victoria, was of Jewish ancestry, although he converted to Anglicanism aged 12.
Sunak, a practising Hindu, who was pictured lighting ceremonial candles outside his Downing Street home for Diwali in 2020, assumes the leadership on the day Diwali is being celebrated around the world, including by the UK’s Hindus, of whom there are more than 800,000.
(Reporting by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Seban Scaria)
