Rishi Sunak has become Prime Minister, after Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt both announced that they would be dropping out of the Conservative leadership race. After only 27 MPs declared their support for Mordaunt, as opposed to the 194 backing Sunak, he became our third Prime Minister in three months, our fifth Conservative leader since 2016, and our 30th premier to have gone to Oxford. He is the only candidate to have cleared the threshold of 100 MPs, after Mordaunt dropped out at 2pm on Twitter.
In his acceptance speech, Sunak started by paying tribute to Liz Truss for her ‘dignified’ leadership ‘under difficult circumstances abroad and at home’. He then went on to say that he was ‘humbled and honoured’ to have the support of his fellow MPs and be elected leader. ‘It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to serve the party I love and give back to the country I owe so much to.’ He also said that the UK is a great country but faces ‘profound’ economic challenges, calling for stability and unity. ‘I pledge that I will service you with integrity and humility,’ Sunak said, adding that he will work day in day out to ‘deliver for the British people’.
A Tory insider told Tatler, ‘Rishi is incredibly market proficient, there is nobody more qualified in understanding their reactions than him in the party. He will be trusted, as he obviously predicted all of this.’
Another senior Tory source told Tatler, ‘His strengths are obvious. In a parliamentary party largely devoid of the talent, brains, or financial knowhow of previous generations, Sunak is a bright star. Officials at the Treasury reported he knew more about economic matters than them, and he possess the finest economic intellect of any Prime Minister or Chancellor since Nigel Lawson – and perhaps ever. He is also never unwilling to challenge orthodoxies, as his time as the Cabinet’s biggest opponent of lockdowns proved.’
Rishi Sunak
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