Less than a week after Truss' resignation, the dust had settled on the selection of Britain's new prime minister, and former Finance Minister Sunak automatically won without going through the normal election process because two other contenders were out early.
Afterwards, Sunak emphasized three points in his speech: first, he called for the Conservative Party to remain united, second, determined that the most important task at the moment is to stabilize the economy, and third, stated that he would not hold an early election.
With the current parliament running until the end of 2024, Sunak is signaling that he is confident that he will remain in the prime minister for the next two years. It is worth mentioning that compared with Truss's resignation in 45 days, setting a record for the shortest-lived prime minister in history, Sunak seems to be more powerful, setting at least 4 records.
First, he is Britain's first non-white prime minister and the first Asian prime minister, and Sunak is only 42 years old, making him Britain's youngest leader in centuries. The last man had a disgraceful record: for the first time since 1834, he became the third prime minister to be replaced in a year.
At the international level, the outside world seems to have a lot of expectations for him, such as Indian Prime Minister Modi took the lead in issuing an article to warmly congratulate Sunak on his election as prime minister, and Indian netizens turned the sky upside down and felt honored.
Not only that, when US President Biden spoke, he also praised Sunak as the first non-white prime minister, considered this result groundbreaking, and said that he hoped to talk to him within a few days, as for why Biden is so active, combined with the actual situation, it should not be difficult to guess.
When Truss was in office, the United States and Britain had a lot of disputes over the issue of the "Northern Ireland Protocol", and Washington even threatened that if London dared to tear up the protocol, it would not sign a free trade agreement with the latter, and Biden himself was dissatisfied with Truss's aggressive tax reduction policy and publicly called it "wrong".
Therefore, Biden hopes that after Sunak takes office, the United States and Britain will be more synchronized on some issues than before, and will be more in line with US expectations in domestic and foreign affairs.
In addition, seeing that the British political situation is so turbulent, the United States is also anxious, and now it is in a critical period of confrontation with Russia, but Western countries are mired one by one, so Washington is very Sunak can stabilize the situation, otherwise if Britain collapses, the entire Western alliance will be panicked, and then what will be used to sanction Moscow.
However, Sunak's "groundbreaking" has a political advantage, but also a disadvantage, and it is difficult to conclude whether his non-white identity of Indian origin is a blessing or a curse.
Don't look at the West's self-proclaimed "diversity", but the arrogance in the bones can not be changed, from Sunak announced the candidacy for prime minister, some politicians attacked him as "not British", it can be seen that there is still some discrimination in British society against non-white attributes. In addition, Sunak is a devout Hindu and the son-in-law of Indian entrepreneur Murthy, and is inextricably linked to India.
This relationship will inevitably not become the handle of political opponent attacks in the future, and he is only 42 years old, although he is indeed young, but he may also be criticized for lack of experience and experience, after all, in the political arena, youth is often not a plus.
Of course, even ignoring Sunak's personal problems, the crisis within Britain does not allow him to make any mistakes. Truss's tossing and turning has made the British economy extremely fragile, and it is not an easy task to get the economy back on track in a short period of time.
In fact, Truss's policy mistakes are only the fuse for Britain's predicament, and the deterioration of the external environment is the root cause. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, the energy crisis, and the Federal Reserve's continuous interest rate hikes have caused a wave of inflation to sweep across the West, and London is simply not left alone.
Therefore, whether to change the prime minister or not to change the role of the British economy is actually not so great, Truss is just a pot man, as long as inflation is not solved, Sunak repeats the mistakes of Johnson and Truss, it is only a matter of time.
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