Primus Inter Pares? Rishi Sunak is on the cusp of making history…

Rishi Sunak. Source: Reuters

With the instinct of a former hedge fund manager, Rishi Sunak has managed to make bets that paid off and shaped his short, but impressive political career.

His decision to back Brexit and Boris Johnson in the 2019 leadership election landed him the Chancellor’s post within a year. The prime minister’s inner circle saw that Sunak’s strong suit was loyalty.

During the COVID-19 lockdown in Britain in 2020, he became widely popular as the free-spending chancellor and the face of the 69-billion-pound furlough scheme to keep people in work.

But his resignation in July, which triggered other exits, bringing down Johnson’s scandal-prone premiership, does not seem to have gone down well with Tory members, especially Johnson loyalists.

Questions are being raised if Sunak (42) is the right person to lead the Tories and the United Kingdom at a time when the country is facing its worst economic crisis and when the Conservative party is facing a serious leadership vacuum.

A passage from India

Sunak’s parents Yashvir and Usha, both Hindu Punjabis, were born in Kenya and Tanzania, respectively. Their parents had migrated to East Africa from India but the families left for Britain after India’s Independence. Sunak’s parents met in Southampton, where his father became a general physician and his mother ran a pharmacy.

The turning point in Sunak’s life came at the end of primary school, when he got a place at Winchester College, an elite public school in Hampshire. But he missed out on the expected scholarship and his middle-class parents bore the high fees themselves by taking on extra work and making considerable sacrifices.

Though he never topped his class, he was popular and intelligent enough to become the school’s first Indian head boy.

Sunak is considered a conservative not only in his outlook but also in his religious attitude, as a practising Hindu who took his parliamentary oath to the Queen on the Bhagavad Gita.

Despite his love for cricket, he has always supported England over India. His career, too, has followed the most traditional English path to power.

When Tony Blair’s landslide victory in the 1997 elections was cheered by all his Labourite classmates, Sunak decided to write a gloomy article for the school magazine lamenting the news.

Oxford, Goldman Sachs, Stanford

He went to Oxford and chose politics, philosophy and economics. But he was not known outside his Lincoln College. Though some of his fellow students joked that he wanted to become a Conservative prime minister, his political ambitions at that age were not taken seriously. He was a non-drinker and would often be seen sipping Coke in a pub. But he remained unknown to student politicians and was not included in their circle.

He joined Goldman Sachs after graduating in 2001 and did well, using his charm and smooth talk to persuade people to part with their money.

Later he won a Fulbright scholarship and went to Stanford to pursue an MBA. There, he met Akshata Murthy, daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the legendary billionaire and founder of Infosys. In 2009 they were married in a two-day ceremony in Bangalore that was attended by Indian politicians and celebrities.

Entering the fray

Sunak decided to enter politics soon after. Most people saw the move as being socially ambitious.

In 2015, he won from the safe Tory seat Richmond in the Yorkshire Dales, replacing Conservative party stalwart William Hague.

Sunak bought a 1.5-million-pound Georgian manor spread over 12 acres, with an ornamental lake, to be in his new constituency. Soon his palatial home became famous for its lavish summer parties and he was dubbed the ‘Maharaja of Yorkshire Dales.’

Though he became an MP barely seven years back, he rose quickly from being a junior minister in the department of local government to not only become the chancellor of the exchequer but also be in the reckoning to become Britain’s first non-white prime minister.

William Hague once described him as a “modern, non-ideological conservative.”

Controversies and the wealth disconnect

But as Sunak tries to convince Tory members that he is the ideal man to revive the ailing economy, a number of controversies involving his personal wealth have erupted.

Fashion columnists have commented on his expensive clothes and trainers in the face of a growing perception that Sunak was in no position to understand the real concerns of the electorate.

Reports that his wife, who has a 690-million-pound stake in her father’s company, Infosys, had saved millions of pounds in taxes using her non-domicile status, did not go down well amid the dire fiscal climate.

Other reports about Sunak having a US green card and a second home in California, made matters worse.

His recent rally at Wembley stadium, where thousands gathered and chanted his name, was an attempt to show his popularity among the masses. But there is no way of telling how many of those present at Wembley were members of the Conservative party and eligible to vote for him at the party hustings.

Polls show the UK is now ready for a non-white prime minister and leader to guide the country through its present crisis.

But it is not clear whether Rishi Sunak, the richest MP in Westminster, is the person to do so.