Former UK finance minister Rishi Sunak wins the Conservative Party race to finally assume the office of the prime minister he missed out on less than two months ago
Rishi Sunak will become British prime minister after other candidates quit 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, will be asked to form a government by King Charles, replacing Truss, the outgoing leader who only lasted 44 days in the job. To win, Sunak still must overcome allegations by opponents that he was a turncoat for quitting Johnson’s government as it foundered amid ethics scandals.
“I would rather lose having fought for the things that I passionately believe are right for our country, and being true to my values, than win on a false promise,” Sunak said in a BBC interview.Sunak was born in 1980 in Southampton on England’s south coast to parents of Indian descent who were both born in East Africa. He grew up in a middle-class family, his father a family doctor and his mother a pharmacist, and says he inherited their hard-working ethos.
There he mingled with the elite. Rivals recently dug up a clip from a 2001 television documentary about the class system in which the 21-year-old Sunak said he had “friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are, you know, working class — well, not working class.”
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