SUNAK. Rishi Sunak is to be officially appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on Tuesday October 25 by King Charles III. Conservative, wealthy, with an elite background, who is the man replacing Liz Truss at 10 Downing Street?
[Mise à jour le 25 octobre à 8h42] It is a victory obtained without difficulty. The only candidate to have garnered more than a hundred supporters among Conservative parliamentarians, Rishi Sunak became the British Prime Minister on Monday, October 24, 2022. This Tuesday, his appointment must be formalized at Buckingham Palace in front of King Charles III. So the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, equivalent to Minister of Finance and Budget, will be responsible for forming a new government, Downing Street said. It is also in front of his new residence that he will deliver a speech at the end of the morning, at 11:35 a.m. French time. Coming from the same camp as Liz Truss, the new strongman of the United Kingdom shares very little with his predecessor who remained only 44 days at the head of the country.
After his defeat in the summer elections, Rishi Sunak comes to power as the United Kingdom is in the midst of crisis and he makes his own the mission to bring “stability and unity” to fight “deep economic difficulties”. In a short speech delivered on October 24, the 42-year-old also assured that “bringing the party and the country together will [sa] absolute priority.” But far from the drastic state-funded aid programs devised by Liz Truss, criticized by the ex-banker and which have worsened the critical economic situation in the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak’s strategy should more closer to the fiscal austerity of which he is a supporter. In addition to lifting the country’s economy, the new British Prime Minister will also try to stay in office longer than the two heads of government who preceded him. that he is the youngest Prime Minister in contemporary UK history and also the first of foreign descent Portrait of the new tenant of 10 Downing Street, the fifth since Brexit in 2016.
What is Rishi Sunak’s program?
Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom without having campaigned publicly since the announcement of the resignation of Liz Truss. The former minister of Boris Johnson had however surveyed the country during the summer during the race for the succession of “BoJo” which he had led against Liz Truss. He had thus been able to develop his program.
the Telegram details that the aspirant to 10 Downing Street intends to lower the minimum rate of income tax from 20 to 16%, but not for now: he aims… at the end of 2029 to “ensure that the cuts will be financed by growth and not by borrowing” specifies the newspaper. Still on the economy, his proposals are vague, with simply aid announced for retirees and the poorest. In terms of energy, he aims for the kingdom’s energy independence by 2045, wishing to focus on wind, solar and nuclear power, while lowering VAT in this sector.
On the international side, Rishi Sunak announced this summer that he wanted to cap the number of refugees received each year in Great Britain and toughen the conditions for asylum applications. As for the war in Ukraine, he had announced that he would “double his efforts and strengthen[t] our policy of total support for Ukraine.” An increase in the defense budget is also on his agenda.
Rishi Sunak is a strong supporter of Brexit. Unlike Liz Truss who initially campaigned for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union, the new Prime Minister has always supported the country’s exit from the EU. “Brexit is a once-in-a-generation choice. When I see what’s happening in Silicon Valley or India, the speed at which things are changing, I think we have to have the flexibility and dexterity to adapt,” he said, criticizing a slow organization, thus supporting Boris Johnson’s approach.
Origins, religion… Biography of Rishi Sunak
Rishi Sunak, 42, was born in Southampton, in the south of England, almost on the edges of the English Channel. Coming from a family originally from India working in the medical field (mother a pharmacist and father a doctor), he graduated in philosophy, politics, economics and business administration after studying at Oxford and then Stanford, in the United States. It was there that he met Akshata Murthy, daughter of Narayana Murthy, Indian billionaire and co-founder of Infosys, a computer systems company. Passed through the world of finance for ten years at the beginning of 2000, notably at Goldman Sachs.
He then entered politics and campaigned, successfully, to be elected MP in the north of England in 2015. A position he has since ceased to occupy. A fervent supporter of Brexit, he joined Theresa May’s government in January 2018 and remained there until the summer of 2022, going from Under-Secretary of State to Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Economy), after having occupied the position of number 2 within this ministry. On July 8, 2022, he resigned from his post to put pressure on Boris Johnson and force him to leave his post as Prime Minister.
If the origins of the first non-white British Prime Minister are often the subject of discussion, it is no less true for religion, in a Protestant country. A question on which Rishi Sunak has already poured out. “I’m completely British, it’s my home and my country, but my religious and cultural heritage is Indian, my wife is Indian. I’m open about being Hindu,” he told the newspaper. Standard Businessclaiming not to eat beef.
Just arrived at 10 Downing Street, Rishi Sunak is already at heart of a controversy. The new Prime Minister of United Kingdom would be at the head of a fortune of 730 million pounds sterling, or 840 million euros. His heritage is therefore twice as important as that of the royal couple. Before entering politics, Rishi Sunak was a banker at Goldman Sachs and associates. Within the company, he earned several million pounds. However, the overwhelming majority of his wealth comes from his union with his wife, Akshata Murthy. The latter is the daughter of NR Narayana Murthy, founder of the company Infosys, whose value is estimated at 100 billion dollars. It holds shares worth approximately one billion dollars.
It’s not so much the amount of the couple’s fortune that questions but rather how Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy spend it. Thus, the couple owns four apartments and houses, including one in California, United States. In addition, they would have installed an indoor swimming pool worth 400,000 pounds in the latter. To heat it, it would cost them 14,000 pounds a year, according to the Guardian. This represents six times the average energy bill of a family… Moreover, Akshata Murthy is considered a person “not domiciled” in the United Kingdom by the British tax authorities. This would have saved the couple no less than £20million in tax, legally.
Rishi Sunak appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, his wife Akshata Murthy is called to become the Fisrt Lady. A change of status which comes after the name of this heiress of an Indian billionaire was singled out at the start of 2022 for a legal but questionable tax optimization (see above). Born in India, Akshata Murthy lives mainly with her grandparents during the first years of her life while her father and her mother take off their career: her computer programmer father is in the process of creating Infosys while her mother becomes the first woman engineer. of the automotive group Tata Motors. The young girl ends up joining her parents in Mumbai before flying off to study at prestigious universities. In order, she occupied the benches of Claremont McKenna College, in California to study economics and French, then the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles before joining Stanford. It is there that she meets and begins her love affair with Rishi Sunak, a Briton of Indian origin. The couple married in 2009 in Bengaluru in southern India and lived for a few years in the United States before settling in the United Kingdom where Rishi Sunak rose through the ranks in the political sphere. Together, the British Prime Minister and Akshata Murthy have two daughters.