Rishi Sunak has been elected unopposed as leader of the Conservative Party and will be the UK’s next prime minister. Aged 42, he will also be the youngest to assume the office since the 2nd Earl of Liverpool in 1812. and the first from an ethnic minority since Benjamin Disraeli in 1874. Check out Katie Strick’s profile for much more.
It is a remarkable story and an astonishing comeback for a man who isn’t even in the cabinet, having resigned his post and lost the subsequent leadership contest to Liz Truss seven weeks ago. And it crowns a meteoric rise for a man who’s only been an MP since 2015.
Which brings the inevitable question, how will Sunak fall? This is a little churlish. He’s not even in the job yet. And it is first right to mark this moment – the first British Asian to hold the top job in politics.
Sunak’s trajectory is in some ways pretty typical: Winchester College followed by PPE at Oxford, investment banking and dabbling in Thatcherite politics before being selected for a safe seat. At the same time, his success will be a tremendous source of pride to many millions of people in this country and around the world. (And a barely day after *that* Virat Kohli knock). It also reflects modern Britain. Let’s celebrate that, too.
But back to the question. If the Conservative Party is looking for a silver lining in having three prime ministers in as many months, it can at least console itself in the fact that the last two weren’t brought down over the EU.
Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May all fell, or had their premierships severely disrupted, by internal divisions over Europe. This sequence was only broken when Boris Johnson resigned over personal probity and Liz Truss went after seeing her entire economic philosophy pilloried and then reversed.
Sunak, for his part, secured nominations from more than half of Conservative MPs and did so so from across the ideological spectrum. Former First Secretary of State and now chair of the One Nation Caucus, Damian Green (albeit a supporter of Penny Mordaunt), said his colleagues would “welcome the prospect of a moderate, pragmatic Conservative government“.
Meanwhile, he also won over hard Brexit die-hards such as former chair of the European Research Group, Steve Baker. The Sun’s Harry Cole has tweeted that the ERG claims Sunak has promised to use the Parliament Act to ensure the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill becomes law in the face of opposition in the House of Lords.
It isn’t clear to me how overriding international law over a subject as sensitive as the Northern Ireland Protocol is in the same customs union as moderation and pragmatism. But this is probably why Sunak is about to be prime minister and I write a moderately successful daily newsletter.
No doubt Sunak will attempt to bind his friends and frenemies through that dreaded term, a government of all the talents. And it would be difficult to run an administration more narrow and factional than that of his predecessor. But the challenges are immense.
For starters, Sunak has no personal mandate. Sure, this is a parliamentary system, not a presidential one, but these things matter. That he addressed Conservative MPs before speaking to the nation illustrates just where decision-making lies. Indeed, Sunak has said next to nothing publicly in the last few days.
There is supposed to be a major fiscal statement on Monday and we don’t know who the chancellor will be. The economy is teetering on the edge. Mortgage rates are spiking, food inflation is off the charts and there is a war in Europe. These are not propitious times.
There is much talk of unity from all sides in the Tory party. But unity in theory, amid a recession, when you’re 30+ points behind in the polls, is a lot easier than in practice.
In the comment pages, Tanya Gold says she screamed when Just Stop Oil protesters threw soup over Van Gogh’s sunflowers. But later realised it was denial, “which comes when you know someone is speaking the truth and it is too painful to bear.”
While Melanie McDonagh is mad at Royal Mail who, it turns out, are replacing old-style stamps with barcodes that can be tracked digitally.
And finally, what is making you feel older right now: that the next prime minister is 42 years old, or this story about a TikTok trainspotting megastar you’ve never heard of with a new TV show and a backstory of controversy over his authenticity?
