When I grow up I’ll be a Jedi...or Chancellor
WITH his baggy school uniform, rolled down socks and shy grin, there is no hint of the heavyweight leader he would grow into.
But Chancellor Rishi Sunak celebrated his whirlwind year in office yesterday by reminding his supporters how his political journey began.
He treated his thousands of social media followers to pictures of himself as a skinny lad and as the 40-year-old Cabinet Minister trying to rescue the economy.
Mr Sunak captioned his childhood picture “how it started” and the adult image, taken outside his No 11 Downing Street residence:“how it’s going”.
He joked: “Growing up I never thought I would be in this job (mainly because I wanted to be a Jedi).”
But he went on: “I’m honoured that on this day last year the PM asked me to serve as Chancellor.
“It’s been incredibly tough but thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way.”
The Chancellor’s snaps attracted more than 80,000 likes on Instagram and Twitter, and thousands more comments.
He was appointed Chancellor on Valentine’s Day last year as the coronavirus crisis took off and Sajid Javid resigned in protest at having to fire his aides.
Just seven months before his elevation from Chief Secretary to the Treasury he was a junior housing minister. But within weeks of arriving at No 11 he had won an army of admirers with a first Budget which pledged £12billion to help offset the disastrous effects of the lockdown.
Since then, he has been a familiar and respected figure in the Government’s fast-changing response to the pandemic. Mr Sunak was born in Southampton, the oldest of three children to immigrants Yashvir, a GP from Kenya, and Usha, a pharmacist, from Tanzania.
The young Rishi was sports mad and as a fan of Southampton FC, his hero was Matt Le Tissier. But he also excelled academically at prep schools Oakmount and Stroud, which set him up to join elite Winchester College, where he became head boy.
Ollie Case, a Stroud classmate, said: “The teachers would say, ‘He’s going to be a prime minister’.”
Mr Sunak graduated with first-class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Lincoln College, Oxford, and went on to join US Ivy League business school Stanford.
He went into the City as an analyst with investment bank Goldman Sachs before entering politics, becoming MP for Richmond, North Yorkshire.
He married Akshata, daughter of Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, 12 years ago, and they have daughters Krishna and Anoushka.