Rishi Sunak: Bio and His Path to PM

Introduction

British politician Rishi Sunak, born on May 12, 1980, has led the Conservative Party since October 24, 2022, and served as prime minister since October 25, 2022. Sunak has served as Richmond (YorksMember )’s of Parliament (MP) since 2015. Prior to this, he served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022.

Sunak was born in Southampton to East African-born Indian immigrants who arrived in the nation in the 1960s. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Winchester College, his philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) coursework at Lincoln College in Oxford, and his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University. At Stanford, where they later got married, he met Akshata Murty, the daughter of Infosys billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy. Sunak began his career as a Goldman Sachs associate after graduating before joining The Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners as a partner.

After the 2015 general election, Sunak replaced William Hague as the House of Commons’ representative for Richmond in North Yorkshire. In the 2016 referendum, Sunak cast a “leave” vote.During the 2018 cabinet shuffle, he was chosen to serve as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in Theresa May’s second administration. He gave May’s Brexit withdrawal deal three “yes” votes. After May’s resignation, Sunak supported Boris Johnson’s bid to become the new leader of the Conservative Party. Following Johnson’s appointment as prime minister, Sunak was chosen to serve as the chief secretary of the Treasury Department.

Sunak became Chancellor of the Exchequer in February 2020 after Sajid Javid resigned in the cabinet shuffle. As Chancellor, Sunak played a significant role in the financial response of the government to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the economy, including the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out programmes.He resigned from his position as chancellor in July 2022 due to a political crisis, and Johnson took his place.

Sunak ran against Johnson for the position of Conservative Party leader, but she lost to Liz Truss in the members’ vote. On October 24, 2022, Sunak was chosen without opposition as the new leader of the Conservative Party following Truss’ resignation amid a political crisis. He was the first British Asian and Hindu to hold that position when King Charles III named him Prime Minister, the first appointment made during his reign.

Early Life and Education

Sunak’s parents, Hindu immigrants from the Indian subcontinent of Southeast Africa, Yashvir and Usha Sunak, gave birth to him on May 12, 1980, at Southampton General Hospital in Southampton, Hampshire. Rishi Sunak attended Stroud School, a prep school in Romsey, as well as Winchester College, a boys’ independent boarding school, where he served as head boy. He worked as a waiter at a Southampton curry restaurant over the course of his summer break. He attended Lincoln College in Oxford to study politics, philosophy, and economics. He graduated in 2001 with a first-class grade. During his time in college, he worked as an intern at the Conservative Campaign Office. In 2006, while a Fulbright scholar there, he earned his MBA from Stanford University.

Both of Sunak’s grandparents were born in cities that were then part of British India’s Punjab province: his paternal grandfather was from Gujranwala, which is now in Pakistan, and Ludhiana, which is now in India, was the hometown of his maternal grandfather.His grandparents arrived in the UK from East Africa in the 1960s.

His father, Yashvir Sunak, is a general practitioner for the National Health Service and was born and raised in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (modern-day Kenya). Usha Sunak, his mother, was born in Tanganyika (later incorporated into Tanzania), worked as a pharmacist, and she held ownership of the Sunak Pharmacy in Southampton from 1995 to 2014. She is also an Aston University graduate.

The oldest of three siblings, Rishi Sunak is. His sister Raakhi Williams (born 1985) serves as the global fund for education in emergencies’ chief of strategy and planning in New York, while his brother Sanjay Williams (born 1982) is a psychologist.

Personal Life

Hindu Sunak is. He took the Bhagavad Gita as his oath of office in the Commons. He married Akshata Murty, one of the richest women in Britain, in August 2009. Akshata Murty is a shareholder in the technology company Infosys, which was founded by her father, N. R. Narayana Murthy. In 2022, Sunak and his wife were spotted at the Bhaktivedanta Manor temple in Hertfordshire participating in Krishna Janmashtami celebrations and cow worship.

Business Career

Sunak worked as an analyst for the financial organisation Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004. He then worked for Children’s Investment Fund Management, a hedge fund manager, where he was promoted to partner in September 2006.He left in November 2009 to work with former coworkers at Theleme Partners, a brand-new hedge fund firm with $700 million under management that launched in October 2010. At both hedge funds, he was supervised by Patrick Degorce. Between 2013 and 2015, Sunak served as a director of Catamaran Ventures, an investment company owned by his father-in-law, the Indian entrepreneur N. R. Narayana Murthy.

Early Political Career

• Member of Parliament

Sunak defeated Wendy Morton in the Conservative party’s Richmond primary in October 2014 to become their nominee (Yorks). The previous occupant of the post was William Hague, a former party leader, first secretary of state, and foreign secretary. One of the safest Conservative seats in the UK, the position has been held by the party for more than a century. While leading the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit at the center-right think tank Policy Exchange that same year, Sunak co-authored a report on BME communities in the UK.

In the general election of 2015, he won the district’s MP seat by a margin of 19,550 (36.2%). He served on the Select Committee on Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs from 2015 to 2017. Sunak supported Brexit when the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union in June 2016.

He wrote a report for the Centre for Policy Studies that year advocating for the creation of free ports in the wake of Brexit. The following year, he produced another report in support of the creation of a small- and medium-sized business retail bond market.

Sunak won re-election in the general election of 2017 by a larger margin of 23,108 (40.5%). He served as the parliamentary undersecretary of state for local government from January 2018 to July 2019. Sunak opposed a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement and supported the Brexit withdrawal proposal put forth by the then-prime minister Theresa May on all three occasions.

For Johnson’s campaign in June, Sunak wrote an article with fellow lawmakers Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden. At the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, Sunak backed Boris Johnson.

• Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Sunak was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury on July 24, 2019, reporting to chancellor Sajid Javid. He was accepted into the Privy Council the next day.

Sunak won the 2019 general election by a larger margin of 27,210 (47.2%). As a representative of the Conservatives during the election campaign, Sunak took part in the seven-way election debates on the BBC and ITV.

Chancellor of Exchequer

Press briefings in the weeks preceding Sunak’s selection as chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that a new economic ministry headed by Sunak might be established in order to curtail the authority and sway of Chancellor Javid at the Treasury. Dominic Cummings, who served as Johnson’s chief adviser, was known to favour Sunak, who was regarded as the “rising star” who successfully represented Johnson during the 2019 election debates. In order for Cummings to “keep an eye” on Javid, The Guardian reported in February 2020 that Sunak would continue in his position as chief secretary to the Treasury and that Javid would continue in his capacity as Chancellor.

• Appointment

A cabinet reorganisation on February 13 resulted in Sunak being appointed chancellor. That day, after speaking with Johnson, Javid tendered his resignation. During the meeting, Johnson had offered to keep his position—but only if he fired all of his Treasury advisers and replaced them with Cummings’ picks. According to Javid, “no self-respecting minister would accept those terms.” Sunak’s appointment was interpreted as a sign that the Treasury would no longer be independent of Downing Street because, in the words of Robert Shrimsley, chief political commentator for the Financial Times, “good government often depends on senior ministers – and the Chancellor in particular – being able to fight bad ideas.”

• Covid 19 Pandemic 

On March 11, 2020, Sunak’s first budget was delivered.This included an additional £30 billion in spending, of which £12 billion was designated for reducing the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic effects.

Chancellor Sunak’s actions were criticised because some workers were ineligible for the Treasury’s income support programmes as the pandemic had financial repercussions. After hundreds of MPs contacted the Chancellor, Ed Davey, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, claimed that people were being unfairly “hung out to dry” and that “their dream jobs were turning into nightmares.”

• Budget of March 2021

He claimed in his March 2021 budget that the fiscal year 2020–2021 had the highest deficit in peacetime at £355 billion. The budget proposed a rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% in 2023, a five-year freeze on the higher rate income tax threshold and the tax-free personal allowance, and an extension of the furlough programme until the end of September. Since Healey in 1974, Sunak was the first chancellor to increase the corporate tax rate.

Other Actions

In June 2021, Sunak will host a G7 summit in London. A tax reform agreement that sought to create a global minimum tax on multinational corporations and online technology companies was signed. The OECD signed an agreement to participate in the tax reform plan in October 2021.

To help pay for the strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, Sunak privately lobbied for the imposition of a green levy, which would have resulted in higher gasoline and diesel prices. The Treasury’s proposed Fossil Fuels Emissions Trading Scheme sought to tax pollution from diesel trains, shipping, building heating, and road transportation, which together account for more than 40% of UK carbon emissions. In the end, Boris Johnson turned down the plan, telling officials that he didn’t want to increase consumer costs.

In an effort to forge stronger economic ties with China, he supported trade negotiations. Despite concerns from the Bank of England about the technology’s financial stability, Sunak proposed new laws that would allow stablecoins to be used for regular payments. Sunak gave the Royal Mint an order in April 2022 to design a non-fungible token (NFT) backed by the UK government that would be released by the end of the summer.

On July 5, 2022, Sunak resigned as chancellor amid controversy surrounding the sexual harassment claims made against Chris Pincher MP, just seconds after Sajid Javid resigned as health secretary.

His Path to PM

On July 8, 2022, Sunak ran for the position of Conservative Party leader to replace Johnson. Sunak announced the beginning of his campaign in a video shared on social media, promising to “restore trust, rebuild the economy, and reunite the country.” He declared that his values were “patriotism, fairness, and hard work.” Stop using language that is gender neutral, Sunak vowed. While ready4rishi.com was registered on July 6, 2022, two days after Sunak resigned as chancellor, readyforrishi.com was first registered with GoDaddy on December 23, 2021. The earlier domain directs users to the later one. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a supporter of Johnson, referred to Sunak as a “high tax chancellor,” and other conservative politicians who had backed Johnson criticised him for “leading the charge in bringing down the prime minister.”

According to a report from the 22nd of October, Sunak had the necessary support—100 members of the House of Commons—to stand for election on the 24th. On Twitter, Tobias Ellwood expressed his gratitude for becoming the 100th Tory MP to support the #Ready4Rishi campaign. On the afternoon of October 22, 100 MPs had publicly expressed their support. Sunak announced on October 23 that he would run for office. Sunak was named the new Leader of the Conservative Party and subsequently appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after Johnson declared himself to be out of the running and Mordaunt withdrew.

Several members of the cabinet and well-known party figures, including Lord Frost, Kemi Badenoch, Nadhim Zahawi, and Sajid Javid, and others supported Sunak.

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Sunak became the nation’s first Hindu and British Asian prime minister when King Charles III appointed him on October 25, 2022.

• Cabinet

On October 25, 2022, Sunak began appointing his cabinet. He appointed Dominic Raab to serve as Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice, and Deputy Prime Minister. Sunak renewed the positions of James Cleverly, Ben Wallace, and Jeremy Hunt as the Secretary of State for Defense, Foreign Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, respectively. He also chose Nadhim Zahawi to be the Conservative Party’s leader. Sunak controversially chose Suella Braverman to be his home secretary. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have questioned Braverman’s reinstatement to the cabinet despite an allegation of a security breach in which Braverman allegedly shared secure information with a colleague.

• Environment

On October 26, Sunak reinstated the fracking ban outlined in the Conservative 2019 manifesto, reversing the position of his predecessor.

Sunak announced in October that he would skip the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt in order to focus on pressing domestic issues. As a result of pressure from lawmakers, environmental activists, and others, Sunak declared he would go. On November 4, Sunak attended a reception hosted by King Charles at Buckingham Palace. About 200 politicians and activists gathered for the meeting, and Sunak assured them that the UK would continue to pursue its environmental goals after its COP 26 presidency. Sunak forewarned in his speech that as climate change wreaks havoc on the planet, more people will suffer and that by doing nothing, people run the risk of leaving their children a hopeless inheritance. Sunak also praised King Charles for his protracted environmental advocacy.

Sunak established The Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) on November 7 at the COP 27 summit, expanding upon the Glasgow Climate Pact initiative that was first started at COP 26. With the help of 26 nations and the European Union, the partnership hopes to stop and reverse deforestation by 2030. Together with private funding, these nations contribute more than 33% of the world’s forests and 60% of the global GDP, bringing the partnership’s total assets to $23.8 billion. 

Public Image

After being chosen as Chancellor of the Exchequer at the start of 2020, Sunak came out of relative obscurity and started participating in public discourse. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, he had “better ratings than any politician since the heydays of Tony Blair,” according to one analyst, by British political standards. In a September 2020 Ipsos MORI poll, Sunak received the highest satisfaction rating of any British chancellor since Labour’s Denis Healey in April 1978. Sunak developed a cult following in the media, and he was the target of numerous jokes and rumours about how attractive he was on social media and in magazines.

Early in 2022, as the cost of living started to garner more attention from the general public, Sunak’s response as Chancellor of the Exchequer was viewed as insufficient, and he received some of his lowest approval ratings. The Sunak family’s financial dealings came under scrutiny throughout this fall. Sunak sent the late Queen the following message after she passed away on September 8th, 2022: “Thank you. For a lifetime of service to our nation, for teaching us what it means to do our duty, and for consistently putting the needs of the nation and commonwealth first. Like Queen Elizabeth II, there will never be another.

Conclusion

“It was not surprising to see Rishi re-elected in 2017 and 2019. He has proven to be a diligent constituency MP. He is a remarkable person, and I think he will continue to be a powerful and successful advocate for our community.”

Lord William Hague of Richmond quoted.