The forty-eight days that have marked British politics, making three different Prime Ministers alternate twice, ends today with the leadership of the Conservative party, and therefore of the country, which will go to Rishi Sunak. To get to live in the rooms of Downing Street i prime minister wannabe conservatives had to have the support of an internal base of 100 deputies, with applications closed at 3 pm Italian time. The race to succeed Liz Truss, as had already happened for Boris Johnson, was decided only among the members of the Tories, as the majority party. On the straight that preceded the finish line, Sunak had a large margin of advantage, having been the only one in the party able to find at least 100 deputies ready to support him. Penny Mordaunt, conservative leader of the House of Commons, was the first to run but she didn’t even make it to thirty. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was favored by the retirement of his former prime minister, that Boris Johnson who seemed about to want to challenge him in the race of the two thrones, only to retire because he was unable to “guarantee the unity of the party”, as he himself stated on Sunday evening. Sunak thanks him and in the meantime thinks about how not to be swallowed up by the internal divisions of the party.
Rishi Sunak will be the first premier of Indian descent in the UK. Born in 1980 in Southampton, southern England, the new tenant of 10 Downing Street was born to a family that emigrated from East Africa in the 1960s. His father was born in Kenya, while his mother in Tanzania. While the grandparents were divided between the Panshir valley and Gujranwala, in Pakistan. He studied in Oxford, where in 2001 he graduated from the faculty of philosophy, politics and economics. From 2001 to 2004 he worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and approached the conservative party, going to do an internship at theheadquarter of the party. In 2006 he completed his education and graduated also from Stanford University. He was elected to parliament in 2014, in the “constituency” in which the conservative leader William Hauge was previously a candidate.
To give him the opportunity to move up the ranks of the Tories army is Boris Johnson who, on February 13, 2020, after a government reshuffle, appoints him Chancellor of the Exchequer. The moment is certainly not the most propitious, given that the European continent, including Great Britain, is enveloped by the pandemic and therefore the economic line drawn by Johnson and Sunak becomes an emergency type policy as all European states have found themselves facing. After the government led by Boris Johnson falls under the blows of scandals that infuriate public opinion, Sunak resigns as finance minister and competes against Liz Truss to succeed him at number 10. He loses in the race against Truss, but stands out claiming to prefer “defeat to victory based on a false promise.” The reference is to the mini budget, the economic plan that the Truss government wants to implement if you are elected together with your reference expert, Kwasi Kwarteng. In a comparison she defines it as a “fairytale economics”, A fairytale economy, foreseeing the reaction of the markets and the earthquake of the economy. No sooner said than done.
The moment to become the political leader of the Tories is very delicate: the confidence of the British in politicians is very low, the Conservative party has become an altar where one leader after another follows one another as victims, the economy suffers and the opposition he is clamoring for a return to the elections. To be seen if Sunak will last, or if it will only be the third name in a list of names that i tories they send the government to waste.