Four days later, the political vacuum caused by the resignation of Prime Minister Truss who "played soy sauce" came to an end. At noon local time on October 24, former finance minister of Indian descent Rishi Sunak confirmed his ascension.
He is not the favorite candidate for grassroots members of the Conservative Party, but he is the "least bad candidate" to save the image of the Conservative Party at present.
Since Cameron's government, the Conservatives have been in power for 12 consecutive years and have experienced at least four contests for the leadership of the party, two of which occurred in the second half of this year. Ordinary British people are concerned about how to pay their energy and health bills, and the six-round election of a new leader of the Conservative Party in the summer was like a grand policy roadshow, but it turned out to be a bubble; As a result, the October party leadership election was limited to four days, and if it could not win the support of at least 100 Conservative MPs, it would be disqualified.
There are 357 Conservative members in the House of Commons of the British Parliament, and the media statistics Sunak has the support of 188 members, first and more than half. Former Prime Minister Johnson and current House of Commons leader Mordaunt have withdrawn from the election one after another, so that the Conservative Party does not have to continue the original "formal vote of MPs, two-person televised debate, and online voting of party members".
Sunak and Johnson were once popular candidates for this British prime minister, and as Johnson gave up running, Sunak locked the prime minister in advance
It is the heart of the Conservative Party, but what about public opinion? After reading a political joke, will there be another one?
Oxford alumni 'infighting'
A group of Oxford students take turns as prime ministers, which seems to be an unwritten tradition in Britain.
The three female prime ministers of the United Kingdom so far are all from Oxford, and it is not so earth-shattering to have an Indian brother from Oxford as prime minister. Moreover, in the 2024 British election at the latest, if the ruling Conservative Party loses, Kyle Starmo, who is likely to represent the Labour Party, is still an Oxford.
In fact, in the last 1/4 century, starting with the "political prodigy" Tony Blair, of the six or seven prime ministers of the United Kingdom, only Gordon Brown is not an Oxford graduate, but Brown is also a doctor of the University of Edinburgh.
Corbyn, the "white-bearded" Corbyn who has been the leader of the opposition Labour Party for 5 years, is a wild man, has no serious university degree, lost to Prime Minister Cameron of the Conservative Party in the 2015 general election, and luckily taught the Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May in the 2017 election, but in the 2019 election, he was beaten to the north by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was determined to leave the European Union, and half retired in the next year.
Corbyn
Corbyn, an "old leftist", because of his anti-Iraq war and anti-monarchy, and his harsh scolding of Prime Minister May in parliamentary debates, had a lot of popularity on the Internet, but he was too radical and xenophobic that even Blair and Brown, the predecessors of the Labour Party, could not stand him. Thanks to Corbyn's replacement, Labour now has a 30 percentage point lead over the Conservatives in the polls.
Naturally, like Corbyn's predecessor, Ed Miliband (who succeeded Brown as party leader and held office for nearly 5 years), Tamour, the current leader of the Labour Party, is also an Oxford elite - a former lawyer by law, the usual eloquence of the lineage, in parliament to shame the female Prime Minister Truss to stop talking.
The British Labour Party, as the old saying goes, "is a bourgeois left party." Grassroots Corbyn is a transitional figure used to "increase fans" for the Labour Party, but he blindly chases Internet celebrity issues and does not cooperate with Brexit, but in the last election, the Labour Party lost a lot of iron fans for many years, resulting in the "red wall" being broken by the Conservative Party.
Boris Johnson, who was ridiculed by the Labour Party as a "yellow-haired clown" and a "liar-maker", is an example.
Boris Johnson
The British Labour Party is basically based in the cities, and in addition to the majority of the trade union collective members, there are also hundreds of thousands of individual members; The Conservative Party, like the Republican Party in the United States, has mostly scattered members in the countryside, is not very well organized, and its scale has been shrinking in previous years, but during Johnson's tenure, attracted by the slogan of Brexit, the number of members of the Conservative Party suddenly increased by five or six percent.
In other words, these new party members were brought in by Johnson, and the proportion was high enough to influence the election of party leaders. Therefore, when Johnson was forced into the palace by the Indian-American finance minister in early July this year due to frequent scandals and lost the prime minister's throne, the party was more sympathetic to Johnson.
Sunak, who "backstabbed" Johnson, has been ranked first in five rounds of voting for members of Congress, but in August, he lost to then-Foreign Minister Truss, who still followed Johnson.
In the seething public opinion environment at the time, in this gripping drama of Oxford alumni competition, Johnson's two subordinates - Sunak and Truss, one anti-Johnson, one pro-Johnson, and ultimately pro-Johnson lady, relying on the support of the new party members brought in by Johnson, narrowly defeated the anti-Johnson Indians.
On August 31, 2022, the election for the leader of the British Conservative Party ended, and Truss (right) narrowly defeated Sunak (left)
In fact, if it weren't for Truss (she squeezed into the top four in the third round and the top two in the fifth round), Penny Mordaunt (former defense secretary), who has been second in the previous rounds of party voting, would probably have defeated Sunak in the grassroots party member vote. But Mordaunt is not from Oxford, and his exposure rate was low before, and he was inexplicably "done" in the fifth round.
Conservative Oxford alumni "infight" and do not bring outsiders to play.
Who does the Indian brother rely on
Ordinary people have to climb many steps from the grassroots level to the ministerial level; The Oxford people "take off", the posture is very different, among which the Indian brother Sunak is even more open and hanging the whole time.
The reason why he is called Xiao Brother is because he is indeed young, born in England in 1980; By comparison, Truss was born in 1975; And Mordaunt, who looks like the heroine of "Captain Marvel" and "Wonder Woman", was born in 1973.
Mordaunt
Both Truss and Mordaunt were first elected to Congress in 2010, following Cameron's cyclone. Truss became a minister for the first time in 2014, and Mordaunt became a minister for the first time in 2017, both of which can be regarded as relatively fast promotions.
In 2015, when Cameron was re-elected as prime minister, younger brother Sunak was elected to parliament for the first time, at first as a secretary in the economic sector, but as soon as Johnson took office on July 24, 2019, he was promoted to chief secretary to the treasury and appointed him as finance minister more than half a year later.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the second most powerful person in the government in Britain. How can the Indian-born brother He De make Johnson, an old river, particularly heavy, and finally cause the teacher's father to fall down?
It is said that the little brother is extremely good at exams, as a Goldman Sachs analyst, with hedge fund experience, and can do some small transactions on his own.
In addition to ability, family lineage is also important. The reason why he is emphasized that he is of Indian origin is because he relied on this identity to marry Akshata, the daughter of India's "father of IT" at the age of 29. Akshatami? Not necessarily, but she is a shareholder in the Infosys Group, which her father founded. Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Wall Street, had a market capitalization of $100 billion at the start of the year and is now down a bit. British media reported that this year the Sunaks were ranked 222nd among the 1,000 richest people in Britain. According to the annual list, the two have a combined fortune of £730 million.
Sunak with his wife Akshata
Married to a wife who claims to be "richer than the Queen of England", Rishi Sunak wants to thank his parents for letting him attend an aristocratic school from an early age, and then to Stanford MBA, where he met the real nobleman Akshata.
It is said that Indian dramas are very popular in the UK, and there are many Indian and Pakistani ministers in the British cabinet, but Indians as British prime ministers are still a little weird in the British Conservative Party tradition based on conservatism and pragmatism.
Especially, the little brother is only 42 years old. Blair and Cameron both became prime ministers at the age of 44, and the younger brother is still so young that he is about to take over a "P5" nuclear-armed state, and is likely to compete with Kyle Stamo of the Labour Party next year - although the other party entered parliament in the same year as him, he is 18 years older than him.
The little brother who was exposed to have a US green card and his wife avoided tens of millions of pounds in taxes, can he catch it?
"Britain is a great country, but it is facing a deep economic crisis", Sunak's words blocked everyone's leisurely mouth.
The handsome guy said: Now you need me, don't - for - embarrass - me.
Sunak
Indeed, it was precisely because the aggressive tax cuts under Truss (the black finance minister) caused the pound to depreciate, causing Truss himself to resign, that the top of the Conservative Party so quickly tended to let the handsome guy come to power - after all, the handsome guy had predicted all this long ago; A room of "hindsight" has a solid appreciation of the sharp judgment of a handsome guy.
Especially after former Prime Minister Johnson withdrew from the party leadership battle on October 23, from the perspective of the top of the Conservative Party, instead of supporting the low-profile Mordaunt to run against the trend for party leader, it is better to follow Sunak this time.
And persuading Mordaunt and quickly ending Truss's farce of more than a month in power has damaged the reputation of the Conservative Party, which has become the best way to stop losses.
Indian brother, it's up to you to engage in economics.
How long can he work
In theory, Sunak could remain prime minister as long as he can lead the Conservatives to successive elections. But everyone knows that the Conservative Party's poll ratings are now sluggish and may not be able to reverse it in two years. Then, Sunak would be the best outcome for him if he could complete the remainder of the five-year term that Johnson initiated (starting in January 2020).
With more than two years to go before the December 2024 election at the latest, can Sunak, who is in his early 40s, be able to hold the scene?
Sunak and his supporters
You know, in the British local elections in May this year, the Conservative Party lost some traditional seats, and the position of Prime Minister Johnson was unstable at that time. After that, various scandals, fines, and accusations were added, and Johnson, who had been prime minister for 3 years, could not bear it.
The giant leaves the field, and the baton taker behind is difficult to catch steadily.
After Truss narrowly became prime minister, Australian television commentators almost didn't recognize her when she attended the queen's funeral ceremony. Sunak thinks he is famous, but in the eyes of some British people, isn't he the somewhat black "foreigner"?
Moreover, after the last competition with then-Foreign Minister Truss's party leader, some of the views of the moderate Sunak on international affairs have also become Trussized, that is, more aggressive and unsparing - no wonder, Truss tweeted "full support" for Sunak as prime minister. But just as the UK cannot support the deficit burden of aggressive tax cuts, it is not difficult to guess whether it can sustain the long-term radicalization of diplomacy.
Truss tweeted: "Congratulations to Rishi Sunak on his election as leader of the Conservative Party and our next Prime Minister. I fully support it. ”
P.S. Don't expect an Indian-born prime minister to attract Indian aid to Britain; When Indian-American Kamala Harris became vice president of the United States, U.S.-India relations reversed.
For the new prime minister, the greater destabilizing factor is Boris Johnson, who has not extinguished his hopes of a comeback. Truss's political career was ruined by a policy mistake, but Johnson's three years of governance were generally passable; He is troubled by moral problems such as partying illegally, lying, and protecting subordinates. If both of his successors make policy mistakes, it will not be a dream for the party to return in an increasingly demoralized political climate.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has staged a similar drama: after Shinzo Abe picked the pick in 2007, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso successively took over as prime ministers, but did not lead the party well, but lost power; In this way, in 2012, Abe came out again and won the victory.
Because of the death of the Queen and the storm of radical tax cuts, the flow of time in British politics has become relatively "slow", and the schedule of the day seems to pass a few days. Many Britons may not realize that Johnson was their prime minister last month, and feel that Johnson has been away for a long time, so they may psychologically amplify this period of "exile" and feel that his punishment is "almost ready".
On September 6, 2022, Boris Johnson delivered a farewell speech before his official resignation from Downing Street
Johnson, who has written comments to newspapers for a long time, is a master of capturing public opinion; His withdrawal from the election this time may be a premonition that it is not yet time for a real comeback, so he chose to mend relations with Sunak for the future.
At present, Brazil's 77-year-old former President Lula is "returning", that is, the 80-year-old Biden thinks about fighting again in 2024; If it is judged that Johnson, who has just turned 58, will let go of Nanshan and raise his life for many years, I am afraid it will be too early to say.
After all, Johnson's battle against Labour at the end of 2019 was a beautiful win – it cost the party its biggest electoral defeat in 36 years. Such a record, former Conservative Prime Minister Cameron, Major and even Margaret Thatcher in the late stage of the administration, did not dare to hope extravagantly.
For Sunak, who has only been a minister for more than two years, it is better for him to take over the phase from the failed Truss than he took Johnson's phase in September with the infamy of "careerists" who "betrayed Johnson's trust" - last time, he was a traitor who took advantage of the danger; This time, he is a hero in recreating stability.
Sunak
The owner of 10 Downing Street came and went, and no less than seven living people had attended the Queen's funeral together, and they could gather and talk about wine in the future.
The pictures in this article are from Visual China and Oriental IC
Author | Executive Deputy Editor of Nanfeng Window Xie Yiqiu
Edit the | Monet
Typography | Sissi