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Rishi Sunak (/ ˈ r ɪ ʃ i ˈ s uː n æ k / ⓘ; born 12 May 1980) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2022. The first British Asian prime minister, he previously held two cabinet positions under Boris Johnson , latterly as Chancellor of the Exchequer from ...
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Rishi Sunak (born May 12, 1980, Southampton, England) British politician and financier who became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minster of the United Kingdom in October 2022. Previously he served as chancellor of the Exchequer (2020–22).
Sunak was born into a family with immigrant roots. His grandparents emigrated from Punjab, in northwestern India, to East Africa, where his mother and father were born in Tanzania and Kenya, respectively. They met and married after their families migrated in the 1960s to Southampton in southern England. Sunak’s father became a general practitioner for the National Health Service. His mother, a pharmacist, owned and operated a small pharmacy, for which Sunak, the eldest of their three children, would eventually keep the books. Later, during his political career, Sunak would draw parallels between his experiences working in the family business and the values he gained from them and those of Conservative Party icon Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a grocer.
As a result of his parents’ sacrifices and saving to fund his education, Sunak was able to attend Winchester College, the exclusive private school that has produced no fewer than six chancellors of the Exchequer. In addition to becoming “head boy” at Winchester, Sunak was the editor of the school’s newspaper. During summer vacations he waited tables at a Southampton Indian restaurant. Sunak went on to study philosophy, politics, and economics (the degree obtained by many future prime ministers) at Lincoln College, Oxford. There he was president of the Oxford Trading & Investment Society, which provided students with opportunities to learn about financial markets and global trading. While at Oxford, Sunak also had an internship at the headquarters of the Conservative Party.
In 2010 Sunak began working for the Conservative Party. During this period he also became involved with Policy Exchange, a leading Conservative think tank, for which he became head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit in 2014. That year Policy Exchange published A Portrait of Modern Britain, a pamphlet that Sunak wrote with Saratha Rajeswaran, deputy head of the BME unit. In 2014 Sunak was chosen as the Conservative Party’s candidate for the House of Commons representing Richmond in North Yorkshire, a safe Conservative seat in the north of England long held by onetime party leader (1997–2001) William Hague. In May 2015 Sunak was elected by a commanding majority. He came into office a Euroskeptic and firmly in the “leave” camp on the issue of Brexit, which he said would make the United Kingdom “freer, fairer, and more prosperous.” He would be reelected to Parliament in 2017 and 2019, and he voted three times in favour of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans.
From 2015 to 2017 he was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee and parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In January 2018 he was appointed to his first ministerial post as undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Sunak became a vocal supporter of Boris Johnson’s pursuit of the party’s leadership, and, when Johnson became leader and prime minister, he rewarded Sunak with a promotion, appointing him chief secretary to the Treasury in July 2019.
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During Sunak’s tenure as second-in-command at the Treasury ministry, tensions were rising between his boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid, and Johnson. When Javid resigned in February 2020, Johnson replaced him with Sunak, who, at age 39, became the fourth youngest person ever to hold that position. Almost immediately Sunak was faced with the manifold challenges brought about by the arrival in Britain of the COVID-19 global pandemic. As the British economy was clobbered by the shutdowns imposed by the government in an attempt to stem the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, Sunak employed the powers of his office to try to offset the economic and human damage. He instituted a broad economic-support program that dedicated some £330 billion ($400 billion) in emergency funds for businesses and salary subsidies for workers aimed at job retention and easing the burden of the lockdown for individuals and companies alike. Those rescue programs were widely popular, and the polished, poised Sunak became the welcome face of the government at daily press conferences where the prime minister appeared less composed.
Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme, aimed at supporting restaurants and pubs with government-subsidized food and drinks, was viewed by some observers as a rousing success, but critics pointed to it as having likely played a significant role in the emergence of a catastrophic spike in COVID-19 cases in autumn 2020. Nonetheless, the portrait of Sunak that arose during the pandemic was that of a superslick, social-media savvy, immaculately dressed, handsome, but down-to-earth politician. “Dishy Rishi” was named “Britain’s sexiest MP” in 2020.
Rishi Sunak (born 12 May 1980) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 25 October 2022. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Boris Johnson government from 2020 to 2022. He is a member of the Conservative Party and has been a Member of Parliament since the 2015 general election.
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