Rishi Sunak has entered Downing Street as the UK’s new prime minister after securing the support of the vast majority of the Conservative parliamentary party to take the reins after the disastrous tenure of Liz Truss.
Mr Sunak was Boris Johnson’s chancellor of the exchequer throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and had looked primed to take over at several points over the course of this year as a result of his boss’s premiership being almost permanently dogged by scandal, from Wallpapergate to Partygate to the Chris Pincher affair.
It was Mr Sunak’s resignation in early July, along with that of health secretary Sajid Javid, that inspired the mass walkout of more than 60 ministers that finally forced the PM from office.
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A popular candidate for the succession among many Tory MPs, although many more within the membership resented his role in Mr Johnson’s defenestration, Mr Sunak finally lost out to Ms Truss on 6 September after a long summer of campaigning, leading to the tragicomic events of the last seven weeks that ended with her absurd downfall.
Mr Sunak’s every criticism of Ms Truss’s “fairy tale” economic policies proved to be entirely borne out, lending him the legitimacy he needed to win favour at the second time of asking and, hopefully, appease the global financial markets that so lost faith in Britain under Ms Truss.
But how much do we know about the background of Britain’s new PM, the first Hindu to lead the country, particularly his early life before he became MP for Richmond in the Yorkshire Dales in 2015?
Mr Sunak was born in Southampton on 12 May 1980, his parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak a GP and pharmacist respectively, the couple originally from East Africa with roots in Punjab, India.
The eldest of three children, Mr Sunak attended the prestigious Stroud School in Hampshire, before being enrolled at the even more exclusive public school Winchester College, founded by William of Wkyeham in 1382.
He was denied a scholarship but still rose to be head boy and edited the school newspaper, The Wykehamist, in which he ran Diet Coke-fuelled editorials attacking Tony Blair’s New Labour government.
In his summer holidays from Winchester, Mr Sunak waited tables in a curry house to boost his coffers, revealing an impressive work ethic few of his schoolmates are likely to have shared.
After finishing secondary school, he attended Oxford University, studying politics, philosophy and economics at Lincoln College and graduating with a first.
Between 2001 and 2004, he worked as a junior analyst at Goldman Sachs focused on US stocks concerning railways and media (oddly, he no longer lists this period on his LinkedIn profile).
His tenure coincided with the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, which was a tumultuous time for the American investment bank in which its profits fell by a reported 25 per cent and it was ultimately forced to let 2,800 staff go, accounting for 12 per cent of its workforce.
Mr Sunak went on to undertake a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) at Stanford University in California, where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, daughter of “India’s Steve Jobs”, billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, whom he would marry in August 2009.
After completing his MBA in 2006, he signed on with Chris Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Management, becoming a partner in September 2006 and staying until November 2009.
From there, he joined former boss Patrick Degorce and other allies from Stanford at the California hedge fund Theleme Partners, which launched in October 2010 with a reported $700m under its control.
Between 2013 and 2015, he was also a director of the investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by his father-in-law, where his wife still works.
It was then that Mr Sunak entered Conservative politics by standing for William Hague’s old seat as MP for Richmond, winning and going on to find himself chancellor within five short years and British PM within seven.
