Rishi Sunak is a British politician born on May 12, 1980, who has held the positions of leader of the Conservative Party since October 24, 2022, and prime minister of the United Kingdom since October 25, 2022. Sunak has been a Member of Parliament for Richmond since 2015. He previously held the positions of Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020.
Parents of Indian heritage who immigrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s gave birth to Sunak on May 12, 1980, at Southampton General Hospital in Southampton, Hampshire. He attended Winchester College for his undergraduate studies, Lincoln College in Oxford for his philosophy, politics, and economics coursework, and Stanford University for his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar.
He met Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, at Stanford, where they would later get married. As of 2022, Sunak and his wife had a combined wealth of £730 million, making them the 222nd richest individuals in Britain. Following graduation, Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs before becoming a partner at The Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners, two hedge fund companies.
Sunak succeeded William Hague as the representative for Richmond in North Yorkshire in the House of Commons after the general election of 2015. Sunak voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. In the 2018 cabinet shake-up, he was chosen to serve as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in Theresa May’s second administration.
He cast three yes votes for May’s Brexit withdrawal deal. Sunak backed Boris Johnson’s bid to lead the Conservative Party after May’s resignation.
Sunak was chosen to be the Treasury Department’s chief secretary after Johnson was made prime minister. After Sajid Javid resigned in the cabinet shuffle in February 2020, Sunak took over as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
As Chancellor, Sunak played a significant role in the financial reaction of the government to the COVID-19 epidemic and its effects on the economy, including the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out programs.
In the midst of a political crisis, he resigned in July 2022 from his position as chancellor and was followed by Johnson. In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Sunak ran to succeed Johnson but Liz Truss won the members’ vote.
Sunak was chosen without opposition to lead the Conservative Party after Truss resigned amid yet another government crisis.
On October 25, 2022, he was named prime minister, making history as the first British Asian, Hindu, and person of color to assume the job.
Rishi Sunak Background
Sunak was born on May 12, 1980, in Southampton, Hampshire, to Yashvir and Usha Sunak, Indian Punjabi Hindus of African origin. Usha Sunak, who was born in Tanganyika (which later became part of Tanzania), is currently the director and pharmacist at the Sunak Pharmacy in Southampton and holds a degree from Aston University.
Yashvir Sunak, who was born and raised in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (current-day Kenya), is a general practitioner in the National Health Service. Of his three siblings, he is the oldest. His sister Raakhi (Williams) works in New York as the worldwide fund for education in emergencies’ chief of strategy and planning, while his brother Sanjay is a psychotherapist.
His grandfathers moved to the UK in the 1960s with their families after being born in the Punjab province of British India. Ramdas Sunak, his paternal grandpa, emigrated to Nairobi in 1935 to work as a clerk.
His wife Suhag Rani Sunak followed him from Delhi in 1937. Ramdas Sunak was originally from Gujranwala, which is now in Pakistan. Raghubir Sain Berry, his maternal grandfather, was from the Ludhiana district (now in Punjab, India) and worked in Tanganyika as a tax official.
He had an arranged marriage with Sraksha, a 16-year-old Tanganyika native, with whom he had three children, and the family moved to the UK in 1966 thanks to the proceeds from the sale of Sraksha’s wedding jewelry. Raghubir Berry joined the Inland Revenue in the UK.
Sunak went to Winchester College, a boys’ independent boarding school, where he was head boy, and Stroud School, a prep school in Romsey. During his summer vacation, he worked as a waiter at a curry restaurant in Southampton.
At Lincoln College in Oxford, he studied philosophy, politics, and economics. In 2001, he received a first-class degree. He worked as an intern at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters while he was a student. He received his MBA from Stanford University in 2006 while a Fulbright scholar there.
Rishi Sunak Business
Between 2001 to 2004, Sunak worked as an analyst for the financial institution Goldman Sachs. After that, he worked at the Children’s Investment Fund Management, a hedge fund management company, where he was made a partner in September 2006.
He departed in November 2009 to work with old coworkers at Theleme Partners, a new hedge fund company that opened in October 2010 and has $700 million under management. Patrick Degorce served as his supervisor at both hedge funds.
Between 2013 and 2015, he served as a director of Catamaran Ventures, an investment company controlled by his father-in-law, the Indian entrepreneur N. R. Narayana Murthy.
Political Career
In October 2014, Sunak won the Conservative primary over Wendy Morton to become their nominee for Richmond (Yorks). William Hague, a former party leader, first secretary of state, and foreign secretary, previously held the position.
The position has been held by the party for more than a century and is one of the safest Conservative seats in the United Kingdom. Sunak co-authored a report on BME communities in the UK while serving as the head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit at the center-right think tank Policy Exchange in the same year. At the general election in 2015, he won the district’s MP seat with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%).
He served in the legislature from 2015 to 2017 as a member of the Environment,
He served on the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs Select Committee from 2015 to 2017.
When the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Sunak was in favor of Brexit. In support of the establishment of free ports following Brexit, he wrote a report for the Centre for Policy Studies that year. The year after, he wrote another report in support of the development of a retail bond market for small and medium-sized businesses.
At the general election in 2017, Sunak won re-election with a larger margin of 23,108 (40.5%). Between January 2018 to July 2019, he held the position of parliamentary undersecretary of state for local government.
On all three occasions, Sunak voted in favor of the Brexit separation agreement put out by the then-Prime Minister Theresa May.
On all three occasions, Sunak voted in favor of the Brexit separation agreement put out by the then-prime minister Theresa May and opposed a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement.
Sunak backed Boris Johnson in the June 2019 contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and he co-authored an article for The Times with other lawmakers Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden to promote Johnson.
Chief secretary to the Treasury
On July 24, 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson named Sunak as the chief secretary to the Treasury, reporting to Chancellor Sajid Javid. The following day, he was admitted to the Privy Council.
In the general election of 2019, Sunak won with a larger margin of 27,210 (47.2%). Sunak represented the Conservatives in the seven-way election debates on both BBC and ITV during the election campaign.
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Prime Minister Of UK
King Charles III appointed Sunak as the country’s prime minister on October 25, 2022, Raking him the country’s first Hindu and British Asian leader.
Cabinet
On October 25, 2022, Sunak began appointing his government. As Deputy Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Justice, and Lord Chancellor, he appointed Dominic Raab.
James Cleverly, Ben Wallace, and Jeremy Hunt were all reappointed as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and Secretary of State for Defense, respectively, by Sunak. Additionally, he appointed Nadhim Zahawi to lead the Conservative Party.
Suella Braverman was controversially chosen by Sunak to serve as home secretary. There are calls for an investigation into Braverman’s reappointment to the government after sharing sensitive material with a colleague.
Environment
On October 26, Sunak reaffirmed the fracking moratorium outlined in the Conservative 2019 manifesto, reversing the position of his predecessor.
As prime minister, Sunak declared that he would skip the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference. This is because of “other urgent domestic priorities, particularly preparations for the autumn Budget,” according to Downing Street.
The absence, according to detractors, demonstrates “a failure of leadership.” The administration, according to opposition parties and environmental organizations like Greenpeace, is not taking the climate crisis seriously enough.
Keir Starmer of Labour said: “It is an opportunity to seize that Britain would be working with world leaders. Not something to avoid.”
Rishi Sunak Image
Following his selection as Chancellor of the Exchequer at the beginning of 2020, Sunak emerged from relative obscurity to enter public discourse. He had “higher ratings than any politician since the heydays of Tony Blair,” according to one observer, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, by British political standards.
Sunak received the best satisfaction rating of any British Chancellor since Labour’s Denis Healey in April 1978 in a September 2020 Ipsos MORI poll. Sunak had a cult following in the media, and on social media and in magazines, he was the subject of numerous jokes and rumors about how gorgeous he was.
Early in 2022, as the expense of living started to garner more attention from the general public, Sunak’s response as Chancellor of the Exchequer was viewed as insufficient, and he got some of his lowest approval ratings. The Sunak family’s business dealings came under examination throughout this fall.
Rishi Sunak Private Life
Hindu Sunak took his oath of office in the House of Commons based on the Bhagavad Gita. He wed Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the creator of the technology firm Infosys, in August 2009. Akshata Murty is one of the richest women in Britain thanks to her ownership of a 0.91% interest in Infosys, which will be worth over $900 million (£690 m) in April 2022.
At Stanford University, Sunak and Murty met and got married. They have two daughters. Murty serves as a director for Catamaran Ventures, her father’s investing company.
They possess Kirby Sigston Manor in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Sigston, a mews home in the heart of London’s Earl’s Court, a condo on South Kensington’s Old Brompton Road, and more.
They also possess a mews home in Earl’s Court, central London, a flat on the Old Brompton Road, South Kensington, and a penthouse apartment on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, California, in addition to Kirby Sigston Manor in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Sigston.
Sunak abstains from alcohol. Due to his extensive Coca-Cola drinking when he was younger, he has admitted to being an addict and currently needs seven tooth fillings. He had served as the East London Science School’s governor in the past. Sunak enjoys cricket, tennis, and horse racing. He also has a Labrador named Nova.
After George Floyd was killed, Sunak spoke out against the bigotry he had experienced in his childhood and the difficulties his family faced when they immigrated to Britain.
After George Floyd was killed, Sunak spoke out about the bigotry he had to deal with in his life and the difficulties his family had when they immigrated to Britain in the 1960s.
James Forsyth, the political editor of The Spectator, and Sunak had been friends since they were in school. Sunak served as Forsyth’s best man at his marriage to writer Allegra Stratton, and the two are godparents to one another’s kids. Sunak and Murty were said to have relocated from 11 Downing Street to a newly renovated West London property in April 2022.
With an estimated combined worth of £730 million, Sunak and Murty were ranked as the 222nd wealthiest people in the UK by The Sunday Times Rich List 2022, making Sunak the “first” among them.With an estimated total worth of £730 million, Sunak and Murty were ranked as the 222nd and 243rd wealthiest individuals in the UK, respectively, on the Sunday Times Rich List 2022. Sunak was therefore the “first frontline politician to join the rich list.”