Reish Sunak, a post-80s Indian brother, never dreamed that after losing to Truss in the British Prime Minister's election, he would still have a chance to turn the table.
As Truss's moves such as cutting taxes on the rich were met with outright opposition from the market, Truss announced his resignation 45 days after taking office, and his short tenure was ridiculed by the outside world as "shorter than the shelf life of lettuce." ”
After getting rid of rivals such as his old boss Johnson, on October 25, Rishi Sunak officially became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and for the first time since 1721, this position did not belong to a white man...
What is the story of the struggle behind this post-80s Indian brother who ascended to the throne of the prime minister? What changes will the new prime minister bring to British politics and economy?
Graduated first in Oxford in Political Science and Economics
Won the "World's Best Cow" scholarship
In 1935, an 18-year-old young Indian, Lamdas Sunak, left his native Punjab and boarded a ship to Kenya, also a British colony, in search of opportunities. After two years of hard work, he finally became a small clerk in the local colonial government in 1937. Little did he know that 85 years later, his grandson, Rishi Sunak, would become the highest executive in the British government, the prime minister.
Rishi Sunak's parents were both born in East Africa. Because Indians suffered in the Africanization movement, By the time of the deportation, after the 60s of the last century, a large number of East African Indians belonging to the middle class immigrated to Britain, including the Sunak family.
Life in the UK had a difficult start, Sunak said: his grandparents had "very little" when they first came to the UK, and it was a blessing to be able to live safely. Sunak's father worked hard to become a registered general practitioner, while his mother became a pharmacist and barely squeezed into the middle class.
Sunak's parents, like many Asian parents, spent their lives doing only three things: working around the clock, saving money, and sacrificing themselves.
Sunak has been smart since he was a child, and he is also very competitive.
After graduating from primary school, Sunak entered the prestigious Winchester School in the United Kingdom, and has since entered high society.
Sunak, 21, once said in an interview with the BBC: "I have aristocratic friends, I have friends from the upper class, and I have friends from the working class. But he quickly corrected: "Well, not the working class." ”
Founded in 1382, Winchester College is one of the most recognizable institutions in the world and a top British secondary school, with the motto "Manners Makyth Man" (politeness regardless of age and status) as its motto, and is one of the nine public schools in the United Kingdom. As an aristocratic boarding school, Winchester College has produced many outstanding individuals for over 600 years.
Tuition fees are also very high, with boarders now costing around £46,000 a year, while day students are almost £34,000 a year. This is not easy for a family with three children at the same time, and Sunak has to work as a waiter in a restaurant to earn tuition during the summer.
Sunak said attending Winchester changed his mind and set him on a "completely different life trajectory." At this middle school, Sunak performed brilliantly and was elected student council president, the first time in more than 600 years that the school's student council president fell to an Indian student.
After graduating from secondary school, he was admitted to Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he majored in the top political science and philosophy (PPE) in the humanities and social sciences.
You know, Oxford can be described as one of the cradles of British politicians, from the first Prime Minister recognized in British history to Walpole to Sunak in 2022, a total of 79 prime ministers, of which 26 graduated from Oxford University, PPE major is also known as the British Prime Minister and politicians' reserve camp. The average acceptance rate of Oxford University is around 20% per year, while the average acceptance rate of PPE majors worldwide is only 8%.
Sunak University graduation results are the first in the major!
After graduating from Oxford University, Sunak went straight to Goldman Sachs as an analyst. Three years later, he joined a hedge fund management firm and became a partner in 2006.
At the age of 24, Sunak took a Fulbright scholarship and went to Stanford University, a top university in the United States, to pursue an MBA.
You know, this Fulbright scholarship should be one of the hardest scholarships in the world.
So far, 62 have won Nobel Prizes, 88 have won Pulitzer Prizes, and 38 have served as heads of state or government.
Married the daughter of "Indian Bill Gates"
Twice as rich as the King of England
At Stanford, Sunak met his wife, Akshata Murty, who married in 2009.
Akshata is a big man, and his father, Narayana Murthy, is the founder of India's second-largest IT company, Infosys, known as the "Bill Gates of India".
How powerful is the old father-in-law's company? Infosys was the first company in India's history to go public in the United States and the first Indian public company with annual revenue of $1 billion.
Around 2000, Sunak's father-in-law was worth about $2.5 billion and was a regular on the Forbes Rich List. He has also served as an independent director on the Board of HSBC and as a director of DBS, Unilever, ICICI and NDTV.
In 2006, Time magazine praised him alongside Gandhi and Nehru as a hero who changed India. In 2012, Fortune magazine selected the greatest entrepreneurs of the year, the first place was Steve Jobs, Naraya Namurti ranked 12th...
The old man knew people with a keen eye and liked the young and handsome Sunak very much, and happily married his precious daughter to him.
The latest figures show that the couple's wealth is already twice that of the British king...
According to the Sunday Times rich list, the couple have a combined fortune of around £730 million. By comparison, this year's list estimates that Queen Elizabeth II had a fortune of around £370 million before her death...
Enter politics
5 years to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer
Sunak, the winner in life, set his next sights on British politics, and the opportunity soon came.
In 2014, there were internal changes at the top of the Conservative Party, and the position of councillor in the Conservative "iron vote district" of Richmond (Yorkshire) became vacant, and Sunak ran and was elected.
In order to show his support, Narayana Murthy, a busy old father-in-law, would even leave his work behind and fly over to canvass for his son-in-law and go out to help his son-in-law distribute leaflets.
There are also political bigwigs who came forward to endorse him:
Former British Foreign Secretary William Hague compared him to William Pitt Jr., who was a member of Parliament at the age of 23 and became a "powerful role" as prime minister at the age of 24. Haig praised Sunak, saying that he was "as young as Pete and as promising as possible."
Soon, Sunak's political status "rocketed." ”
As a staunch supporter of Brexit, he was first appointed as a deputy minister in the government of former British Prime Minister Theresa May, and then supported Johnson, who was the most vocal prime minister at the time, which was appreciated by Johnson.
Sunak backed Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership election, being awarded the post of chief secretary to the Treasury following the latter's election. Following a cabinet reshuffle in February 2020, Sunak was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position that ranks third in ministerial rankings behind Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, making him the youngest owner in the history of the Chancellor's Official Residence at 11 Downing Street.
Shortly after he took office, the pandemic hit, and in the early weeks of the pandemic, Sunak unveiled a broad support package, when the Treasury Department's initiatives included paying people's salaries, arranging generous grant and loan programs for businesses, and providing support to those unable to work during lockdown, making Sunak the country's most popular politician.
The British soon discovered that Sunak was more dashing and personable than the always unkempt Prime Minister Johnson. For a long time, the British regarded Sunak as the best "spare tire" prime minister.
Importantly, Indians, the UK's largest minority group, also support Sunak.
Sunak still retains a strong Indian cultural identity. A devout Hindu, he took the oath of office with the Hindu classic Bhagavad Gita in his hand and visited Hindu temples every weekend. Especially during Diwali in November 2020, Sunak, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, lit a few candles outside the official residence Downing Street 11 to celebrate the festival in the traditional Indian way, which once became a hot topic of public discussion.
Betrayal and controversy
On July 5 this year, the British political scene was shaken, and more than 50 officials resigned one after another, leading to the fall of Johnson.
The first to take the lead in resigning was Sunak.
In the eyes of many lawmakers, Sunak was the one who stabbed Johnson in the back. Sunak announced his candidacy for British prime minister immediately after the fall of Johnson's government.
To a certain extent, this directly led to the election of Truss as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
There is a theory that Truss was elected only because, in the eyes of many lawmakers, the new prime minister "must not be Sunak", because Truss may be less capable by comparison, but at least more loyal.
However, after 45 days as prime minister, Truss was forced to resign because of the anger aroused, and the Conservative Party was not elected, and the position of prime minister eventually returned to Sunak.
But Sunak still faces a number of criticisms:
His life was too extravagant, far from the symbol of the struggle of civilians and minorities that he had worked so hard to create outside.
In one photograph, the seemingly inconspicuous thermos cup on his table was found to be worth £180.
In March this year, Sunak was photographed by the media wearing a pair of small white shoes walking through Downing Street. These seemingly ordinary little white shoes are the latest model of the Common Projects brand, priced at 335 pounds (about 2800 yuan), equivalent to a week's salary of ordinary Brits.
The British "Guardian" also found that Sunak claimed to be driving a very ordinary old golf car, but it was later confirmed that the car was borrowed by him. Sunak, on the other hand, has at least four luxury cars in his name.
The opposition Labour Party questioned her wife's delay in naturalizing British citizenship in order to avoid taxes. Sunak's wife, Murthy, used her status as a "non-UK tax resident" to evade paying taxes in the UK, which could be as high as 20 million pounds (about 165 million yuan).
Some media also found that during Sunak's tenure as British Chancellor of the Exchequer, he also held a US green card, and US green card holders needed to swear allegiance to the United States and pay taxes to the US government. It was not until October 2021 that Sunak took advantage of his first official visit to the United States to return his green card and give up his permanent residence in the United States.
Under so much controversy, Sunak was able to miraculously turn around, and in the final analysis, his past economic policies were recognized. After Truss's "crazy" stimulus, Britain desperately needs a fiscally "safe hand", at least when Sunak was finance minister.
The BBC reported that Sunak said that "economic stability and fiscal sustainability will be at the heart of the government's mission". He said "a great deal of input has been gathered" and stressed that the government will need to make some "very difficult decisions, but it will also consider protecting the most vulnerable and will continue to seek long-term growth".
But in the face of a series of thorny problems such as high inflation and energy crisis, Sunak got an "epic" difficult script, and whether he can perform this play well is still a question mark. Inflation in the UK remained at 10.1% in September, a 40-year high and more than five times the central bank's 2% target, and the BoE is under pressure to raise interest rates further.
Whether Sunak can perform this script well remains to be seen.
This article is derived from the value line
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