ROUGH RIDE TO NO. 10, DOWNING STREET
In an era surely to be counted amongst the most tumultuous in British political history, Rishi Sunak’s period in the House of Commons backbenches lasted a little over six weeks. As Britain’s shortestserving PM, Liz Truss, left the arena, it was time for Sunak, at 42 the youngest premier in over 200 years, to take charge. All other milestones he touched, however, are dwarfed by that one, epochal mark: he is the UK’s first non-White and British-Asian PM. His rise in the Conservative Party, though, has been conservatively smooth.
Of Punjabi descent, Sunak was born in 1980 in Southampton to Yashveer and Usha Sunak, an NHS doctor and a pharmacist respectively, who were born in East Africa and migrated to the UK in the ’60s. Sunak’s paternal grandfather, Ramdas Sunak, an accountant, migrated to Kenya from Gujranwala in pre-Partition Punjab; his maternal grandfather, Raghubir Berry, migrated to Tanzania from Punjab and worked as a railway engineer. Berry moved to the UK in the mid-’60s with his family. Yashveer and Usha met in the UK and married in 1977. Evidently, the Sunaks wanted the best education for their three children, and Rishi was sent to one of the most elite schools in the land—Winchester College. Thence, it was a glide to Oxford University, that breeding ground of Conservative politicians. In past interviews, Sunak, a Star Wars fan, committed Southampton Football Club supporter, a vegetarian and a teetotaller, has spoken about the sacrifices his parents made to send him to these two institutions, and which surely gave an early push to his career.
THE BROWN TORY
While studying for an MBA at Stanford University on a Fulbright scholarship, Sunak met Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and philanthrophist Sudha Murthy. The couple wed in August 2009, and have two daughters, Krishna and Anoushka. The wedding, though attended by Bengaluru’s celebrities, was tastefully modest.
Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs from 2001 to 2004, following it with partnerships in two hedge funds. His political career
started with a bright flash: selected candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Richmond, Sunak delivered a win in the 2015 polls. He took his oath on the Bhagavad Gita after being elected MP. An enthusiastic Brexiteer, his rise started in 2017, when he was made a parliamentary private secretary at the department of business, energy and industrial strategy. He was parliamentary under-secretary of state at the ministry of housing and local government from January 2018 to July 2019, chief secretary to the treasury from July 2019 to February 2020 and appointed chancellor of the exchequer in February 2020 by PM Boris Johnson, a post he held till he resigned in July 2022. During the Covid lockdown, he masterminded furlough payments and the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme for restaurants. A series of scandals hit Johnson in 2022—notably the ‘partygate’ controversy, wherein Johnson was caught lying about gatherings at Downing Street during strict lockdown (one of which, in 2020, Sunak later admitted to attending). Amid growing public discontent over a cost-of-living crisis, a new scandal concerning sexual misconduct by MP Chris Pincher made Johnson’s position untenable. In early July, Sunak resigned, and so did health secretary Sajid Javid, triggering over 50 resignations.
The charge that he stabbed Johnson in the back was to cost Sunak in the race for the Tory leadership, and premiership, a month later, though he denied it. The two challengers, former foreign secretary Liz Truss and Sunak, had different plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis driven by high inflation and enormous energy bills. While Truss planned a ‘trickledown’ strategy pinned on tax cuts for the wealthiest, Sunak argued about fighting inflation first. Truss’s win, and the pandemonium in the markets as she started unleashing her economic agenda, is too recent to repeat. After the bloodbath, recalling Sunak’s prediction that Truss’s plans of unfunded tax cuts and spending hikes would be catastrophic, Tory MPs backed him.
In the past few days, much has been written about Sunak's Indian heritage, and there have been rumblings of racism that make some resent his ascent. Indeed, in a past interview, Sunak has spoken about facing racism as a youngster in a restaurant. Former health secretary Matt Hancock, a supporter, says, "He's a true-born Englishman, but he brings many facets because of his heritage." Darren Jones, director of a finance firm, tells india today, "I don't care that he's of Indian origin or a Hindu. There have been Indian citizens woven into the fabric of British society for well over 100 years." The plush lifestyle of Sunak and the wealthy heiress Akshata Murty has often been disapprovingly noted by the British press. In early 2022, it emerged that as a nondomiciled person, Murty was not paying tax on her earnings from abroad, as is her right. But the amounts saved created a controversy, and she said she would start paying taxes on such incomes. Murty read French and economics at Claremont McKenna College in California, has a diploma in fashion designing from Los Angeles, and has a designer label, Akshata Designs. She worked at Deloitte and Unilever before going to Stanford for her MBA, and is director of three firms.
In his first speech as PM, Sunak mentioned the “profound economic crisis” Britain faced, and vowed to make good his promise of a return to stability. With growing disaffection with the Tories, Sunak will be held to his stirring words.