Rishi Sunak was born and raised in Southampton to a family with immigrant roots. His grandparents emigrated from Punjab, a region in northwestern India, to East Africa, where his mother and father were born. They met and married after their families migrated in the 1960s to southern England.
Sunak attended the elite prep school Winchester College, fees for boarding students currently cost £45,936 for the year, before going on to study at Oxford University. He then earned an MBA from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar. There he met his future wife Akshata Murty, daughter of Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys. Sunak worked for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and then as a partner at two hedge fund firms, The Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners, before entering into politics.
Sunak was first elected to the House of Commons in 2015 representing Richmond, North Yorkshire in Parliament. He supported Brexit in the 2016 European Union referendum and backed then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal plans. Sunak voted against a second referendum on the finalized withdrawal agreement which would have allowed British voters a final say on the terms of Brexit.
After Theresa May resigned, Sunak supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. Johnson became the new leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister and appointed Sunak Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In Feb. 2020, Sunak was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer and was put in charge of leading the economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sunak’s wealth was first brought into question in November 2020. The Guardian reported he had not declared a significant amount of his wife and family’s financial interests on the register of ministers’ interests. This included a combined £1.7 billion shareholding in Infosys. Two years later Murty stated she would pay UK taxes on her global income. Labour leader Keir Starmer called it “breathtaking hypocrisy” that Sunak had raised taxes on others amid a cost-of-living crisis while his wife had reduced her liabilities.
Sunak resigned as chancellor in July 2022 after a number of political scandals. Boris Johnson resigned as Prime Minister two days later and Sunak stood in the Conservative Party Leadership election to be the next Prime Minister.
During his bid for Prime Minister, many critics called out Sunak’s wealth and argued that he was the wrong choice to lead the country. A video resurfaced of a 21-year-old Sunak explaining how he had “friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper-class, I have friends who are, you know, working-class,” before immediately backtracking, “Well, not working-class.” Many saw this as proof of Sunak’s extremely privileged upbringing, one unimaginable to most of the country.
In another viral video, Sunak can be seen speaking to supporters of the Conservative party. Sunak stated that he is proud to have undone the economic formulas inherited from the Labour party that “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas.”
Sunak eventually lost the first leadership election of the year and watched Liz Truss take over Downing St for only 45 days. Liz Truss resigned, Sunak announced his candidacy for the second time, and, when his only competition Penny Mordaunt dropped out of the race, he became Britain’s third Prime Minister this year. Two of whom had not been elected by a people’s vote.
While Rishi Sunak is Britain’s first non-white Prime Minister, writer and academic Dalia Gebrial argues that Black and Brown Brits are not celebrating. Gebrial explains that almost billionaire Sunak is not an underdog but rather one of the few people of color that the “systemically racist modern capitalist society” allows to rise to the top.
Britain now has a Prime Minister richer than its king while more than 2 million adults cannot afford to eat every day. As the expensive cost-of-living crisis prevails, the UK will discover if Rishi Sunak can fix the problems other Conservative Prime Ministers have failed to.