Former finance minister Rishi Sunak has been declared the next leader of the UK Conservative Party and is set to become the country's latest prime minister after the collapse of the government headed by Liz Truss who has been just 44 days in the role.

The 42-year-old is the country's third prime minister in less than two months. He emerged as the most promising candidate last Sunday, as he declared his candidacy after securing the support of over 100 Conservative Members of Parliament required to win the contest.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is Sunak's biggest competitor, but he dropped out of the race last Sunday.

Sunak is the first nonwhite leader and the first Indian-origin prime minister of the UK. The rise of Sunak could be "a huge moment" for the South Asian community, noted Barnie Choudhury on BBC, an editor from the Eastern Eye newspaper.

"Role models like Rishi Sunak will be viewed by South Asians who want to enter politics, and if Rishi Sunak were to become prime minister, glass ceilings would be utterly broken and that can only be a good thing for people of color."

Career path

Before entering politics, Sunak worked at the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst. He was first elected to parliament in 2015 after he got elected from Richmond, Yorkshire. Before that, he served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury to oversee public spending. He was re-elected in 2017 and 2019.

Rishi Sunak is a pro-Brexit politician in Parliament. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, he supported leaving the European Union. He is among Johnson’s supporters during the "Leave.eu" campaign and voted to leave without a withdrawal agreement bill in 2019.

The former Goldman Sachs analyst first came to national attention when he became finance minister under Boris Johnson in 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain. He opposed school closures and claimed that trade-offs of lockdowns not properly considered by experts.

Although he was praised for the COVID-19 economic rescue package that avoid mass unemployment within the country, he was criticized for not providing enough cost-of-loving support to households.

The new prime minister is facing a set of challenges as the country is sliding into recession with surging energy, food and mortgage rates.

"The United Kingdom is a great country, but we face a profound economic crisis. That's why I am standing to be Leader of the Conservative Party and your next Prime Minister," he tweeted on Monday.

"I want to fix our economy, unite our Party and deliver for our country," Sunak wrote. He said in a statement on Sunday night that although he had enough support, he realized that he could not govern effectively "unless you have a united party in parliament".

Many of Sunak's supporters describe him as a stabilizing candidate who is capable of bringing the country out of the chaos in recent months.

Suella Braverman, who served as Secretary of State for the Home Department from September 2022 to October 2022, wrote in the Telegraph newspaper last Sunday that "I need a leader who will put our house in order and apply a steady, careful hand on the tiller. That person, for me, is Rishi Sunak.”

However, some critics, like former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, noted in an interview with Telegraph that Sunak is to blame for high inflation, saying the country's record-high levels of inflation began during Sunak's time as chancellor.

Early life

Rishi Sunak was born into a family with immigrant roots. His grandparents emigrated from Punjab in northwestern India to East Africa. His parents met and married after their families migrated to Southampton on England's south coast in the 1960s when lots of people from Britain's former colonies arrived to rebuild the country after the Second World War.

His father was a general practitioner for the National Health Service while his mother owned a local chemist shop. Sunak said during the campaign that he "grew up working in the shop, delivering medicines."

His parents managed to afford Rishi, the eldest of their three children, to attend Winchester College, one of the most expensive private boarding schools in Britain.

At Winchester, he was head boy, as well as the editor of the Winchester College newspaper. He served tables at a curry house in Southampton during the summer holidays before he was going to Oxford.

After graduating from Oxford with the degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Sunak pursued an MBA at Stanford University where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, the daughter of an Indian billionaire.

"My parents sacrificed a great deal so I could attend good schools. I was lucky to study at Winchester College, Oxford University and Stanford University," he recalled. "That experience changed my life and as a result I am passionate about ensuring everybody has access to a great education."

Sunak and his wife have two daughters, Anoushka and Krishna. Sunak says on his website that the two girls keep him and his wife "busy and entertained." In his spare time, he enjoys keeping fit, cricket, football and movies.

(Cover image by Liu Shaozhen)