By Akinwale Kasali
Following the resignation of Liz Truss as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom last week, 46 days in the saddle, Rishi Sunak has emerged the new Leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party.
According to an announcement made by Sir Graham Brady, only one nomination was received by the 1922 Committee for the new leader of the party, and backed by 100 MPs.
Sir Brady, therefore, declared Sunak to be the next Party Leader, and consequently the new Prime Minister.
He confirmed that the new Tory leader Rishi Sunak will address MPs at 14:30 BST.
Earlier, one of the contenders for the UK top job, Penny Mordaunt, had announced his withdrawal from the race, leaving Sunak as the sole candidate for the position.
Mordaunt, in a statement, said, “Our Party is our membership. Whether we are elected representatives, activists, fundraisers or supporters. We all have a stake in who our leader is.”
Sunak was born in Southampton on 12th May 1980, to parents of Punjabi Indian descent who migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s.
He was educated at Winchester College, read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, and gained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar. While studying at Stanford.
He has been Leader of the Conservative Party since 24 October 2022.
He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
Sunak is married to Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys.
Sunak and Murty are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022.
After graduating, Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms the Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners.
