Rishi Sunak to become UK’s first Indian-origin PM

Rishi Sunak will become Britain’s next prime minister after he won the race to lead the Conservative Party, leaving him with the task of steering a deeply divided country through an economic downturn set to leave millions of people poorer.

Sunak, one of the wealthiest politicians in Westminster and set to be the country’s first leader of colour, will be asked to form a government by King Charles, replacing Liz Truss, the outgoing leader who only lasted 44 days in the job before she resigned.

He defeated centrist politician Penny Mordaunt, who failed to get enough backing from lawmakers to enter the ballot, while his rival, the former prime minister Boris Johnson, withdrew from the contest saying he could no longer unite the party.

“This decision is an historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party,” Mordaunt said in a statement as she withdrew from the race just minutes before the winner was due to be announced. “Rishi has my full support.”

The pound and British government bond prices jumped briefly on news of Mordaunt’s withdrawal, but soon returned to their previous levels. According to an ITV reporter, the king was returning to London and could accept Truss’s resignation either later on Monday or on Tuesday.

Sunak, the 42-year-old former chancellor, becomes Britain’s third prime minister in less than two months, tasked with restoring stability to a country reeling from years of political and economic turmoil.

The multi-millionaire former hedge fund boss will be expected to launch deep spending cuts to try to rebuild Britain’s fiscal reputation, just as the country slides into a recession, dragged down by the surging cost of energy and food.

He will also inherit a political party that has fractured along ideological lines, a challenge that damaged the fortunes of several former Conservative leaders.

Perma-crisis

Britain has been locked in a state of perma-crisis ever since it voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, unleashing a battle at Westminster over the future of the country that remains unresolved to this today.

Johnson, the face of the Brexit vote, led his party to a landslide victory in 2019, only to be driven out of office less than three years later after a series of scandals. His successor Truss lasted just over six weeks before she quit over an economic policy that trashed the country’s economic credibility.

Economists have questioned whether Sunak can tackle the country’s finances while holding the party’s multiple warring factions together.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – the fourth person in that role in four months – is due to present a budget on Oct. 31 to plug a black hole in the public finances that is expected to have ballooned to up to 40 billion pounds.

Sunak came to national attention when, aged 39, he became chancellor under Johnson just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain, developing the successful furlough scheme.

The former Goldman Sachs analyst will be the UK’s first prime minister of Indian origin.

His family migrated to Britain in the 1960s, a period when many people from Britain’s former colonies moved to the country to help it rebuild after the Second World War.

After graduating from Oxford University, he went to Stanford University where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, whose father is Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, founder of outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd.

Indians delight

Many Indians are delighted at the prospect of Rishi Sunak becoming the first person of Indian origin to become British prime minister, just as Hindus across the world celebrate Diwali.

Sunak’s expected rise to the premiership had already made it to the front pages of most Indian newspapers – alongside the Indian cricket team’s win over arch-rivals Pakistan in a T20 World Cup match late on Sunday.

Some Indians said on social media that Sunak becoming prime minister this year would be even more special as India recently celebrated 75 years of its independence from British colonial rule.

“This (Diwali) is very special for India’s magnificent cricket victory and in all likelihood, Rishi Sunak, a person of Indian origin, a practising Hindu and our own Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law, becoming prime minister of UK,” Chennai resident D. Muthukrishnan wrote on Twitter.

“Rishi Sunak took oath as an MP on (Hindu holy book) Bhagavad Gita. If he repeats the same for taking oath as prime minister, what a day it is for India, that too on our 75th year of independence from Britain.”

Sunak, 42, is a practising Hindu and is known to celebrate the festival of lights. He has also been photographed lighting candles outside No 11 Downing Street to mark the occasion.

Some British Indian supporters of the Conservatives were also celebrating his rise, with party member Ravi Kumar, 38, from Nottingham, calling it a “watershed moment”.

“I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I could not even imagine a non-white prime minister in my lifetime,” he said. “I always just saw it as a white country and we’d come in as children of immigrants … So to see a British Indian leader is phenomenal.”

Sunder Katwala, director of think-tank British Future, also said it was a historic moment, showing the changes in British politics and public life in recent decades.

“It’s a new normal at the top of British politics and partly because of the chaos of politics at the moment,” he said.

“We have the third female prime minister, followed by the first Asian Prime Minister…Rishi Sunak is actually the fifth British Asian cabinet minister in history, and there wasn’t one until 2010.”

Revelations that Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy, an Indian citizen, had not been paying British tax on her foreign income through her “non-domiciled” status – available to foreign nationals who do not see Britain as their permanent home – hurt Sunak ahead of his race against Truss in the summer.

Murthy, who owns a 0.9% stake in Infosys, later said she would start to pay British tax on her global income.

His family wealth has proved a divisive issue for some.

“Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister isn’t a win for Asian representation,” tweeted opposition Labour lawmaker Nadia Whittome, who also has Indian roots.

“He’s a multi-millionaire who, as chancellor, cut taxes on bank profits while overseeing the biggest drop in living standards since 1956. Black, white or Asian: if you work for a living, he is not on your side.”