Rishi Sonak, who lost to Liz Truss seven weeks ago in the leadership election of the British Conservative Party, became the leader of the ruling party to become the next Prime Minister of Britain with the early resignation of Mrs. Truss and with the most support among the Conservative MPs.
Mr Sonnock will take office as Britain’s 57th Prime Minister after two Prime Ministers – Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – have been forced to resign as party leaders in less than four months.
The economic conditions of Britain after Brexit, the corona epidemic and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, together with the successive scandals of politicians, have shaken the political atmosphere of this country so much that in recent months, records have been broken, from the highest inflation rate in the last forty years to the shortest term of a prime minister in British history has become daily news. Rishi Sunak takes the helm of the government in such a situation.
He will be the first Asian prime minister in British history and the youngest head of government in the modern history of this country.
Rishi Sunak at a Glance:
- Age: 42 years
- Hometown: Southampton
- Residence: London and Yorkshire
- Education: Winchester College, Oxford University, Stanford University
- Family: Wife Akshata Murthy with two daughters
- Constituency in Parliament: Richmond (Yorkshire)
Rishi Sunak; Children of immigrants
Behrang Tajdin; BBC
Rishi Sunak was born in 1980 in the city of Southampton in the south of Great Britain. His father was a general practitioner and his mother was a pharmacist. They are both of Indian origin but born in East Africa and immigrated to Britain from Kenya and Tanzania in the 1960s.
He studied at one of the most famous British private schools, Winchester College, he has a bachelor’s degree in “Philosophy, Politics and Economics” from Oxford University, and then he got an MBA from Stanford University in America.
At Stanford, he met his wife Akshata Murthy, who is the daughter of Naranaya Murthy, an Indian billionaire and one of the founders of Infosys, one of the giants of the information technology world.
After university, Sunak worked at Goldman Sachs for about three years and later was one of the managers of two investment funds.
He entered the parliament in 2015 from the constituency previously represented by William Hague, the former British foreign minister.
rising star
Rishi Sunak is one of the new generation of Conservative Party representatives who have changed the face of this party with the efforts of David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister; A generation in which the number of racial minorities, women, and working class people is much higher than previous generations.
Unlike most of his peers in parliament, he voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, saying he believed Brexit would make Britain “freer, fairer and more prosperous”.
Three years after entering the parliament, he held a government position for the first time. In the summer of 2019, when Boris Johnson took office, he was promoted to deputy finance minister and entered the cabinet.
Only a few months later, with the resignation of Sajid Javed as the finance minister, Sunak replaced him; Just a few weeks before the government implements extensive nationwide restrictions to contain the Corona epidemic.
The pandemic quickly made Rishi Sunak one of Britain’s most famous politicians. As Shahrbandan began, he promised to do “whatever it takes” to help people and businesses.
During the period of Corona restrictions, the Ministry of Finance under Sunak’s supervision provided hundreds of billions of pounds of direct cash assistance to people and businesses, and the popularity of the Minister of Finance skyrocketed. But no popularity is eternal.
The temporary decline of Sunak’s star
As the price of energy carriers increased in late 2021 and early 2022 – a trend that accelerated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – prices, especially electricity, gas, petrol and diesel prices, increased in the UK and the “cost of living” became the buzzword. .
But the measures he took in March 2022 in the “Spring Statement” (which is something like a brief budget bill) to help livelihoods, were insufficient in the opinion of most people, and suddenly Mr. Wazir’s popularity began to decline.
At the same time, it was revealed that his wife had been a tax “non-resident” for years and had not paid UK tax on the millions of pounds in profits she received from her shares in her father’s company.
A few days later, the London police found Sunak guilty and fined her for violating the Corona restrictions by attending one of the illegal parties in the Prime Minister’s office .
Some time later, it turned out that Mr. Sonak still had a US green card until October 2021; A card whose owner must intend to reside permanently in the United States.
In May of this year, the Sunday Times estimated Sunak and her husband’s fortune at £730 million (about $900 million), making them one of Britain’s 250 richest people.
In short order, Sunak’s image in the public mind has changed from the sleazy treasurer at the beginning of the pandemic to a “painless prosperous” who has no intention of staying in the UK, whose family uses every legal loophole to avoid paying taxes in the UK and instead raises taxes on ordinary people.
Sunak’s gaffes
After revealing her husband’s tax status, Rishi Sunak compared himself to Will Smith, the famous Hollywood actor, who went on to slap Chris Rock at the Oscars in an interview with the BBC.
Another strange incident was when, an hour after the announcement of the reduction of gasoline duties, in front of photographers and videographers, a relatively cheap Kia Rio car was filled with gasoline; A car that was later found to have been borrowed from a supermarket employee and filled with gas for free.
He also said in another interview that he is not unaware of the high prices of goods, because he, his wife and their two daughters, “each have their own bread at home.”
