Tuesday will see Rishi Sunak sworn in as Britain’s third prime minister of the year, taking over for the humiliated Liz Truss after just seven weeks and inheriting various issues.
Following the spectacular demise of Boris Johnson’s return campaign and Penny Mordaunt’s failure to get enough support from Conservative MPs, Mr. Sunak was elected as the new leader of the governing Conservatives on Monday.
Britain’s first non-white and youngest prime leader in more than 200 years will be the 42-year-old Hindu.
King Charles III selected Mr. Sunak as his first prime minister since assuming the throne in the morning audience, barely two days after his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, named Truss.
The event on September 6 served as her record-breaking reign’s last significant public performance.
Around 10:15 am (09:15 GMT), Truss will convene his last cabinet meeting before giving a farewell speech in Downing Street. Mr. Sunak is scheduled to speak a little over an hour later.
She departs office as the premier with the shortest tenure in history, following a disastrous budget that drastically reduced taxes and caused chaos in the economy and politics.
Last Thursday, the 47-year-old announced her resignation, saying she had failed to fulfill the “mandate” that Conservative Party members had given her when they picked her over Mr. Sunak in the summer.
Now that his political fortunes have taken a remarkable turn for the better, he promises to do the same for Britain as it deals with decades-high inflation, rising borrowing rates, and a looming recession.
Speaking in front of the public on Monday, Mr. Sunak pledged “stability and togetherness” while uniting “our party and our nation.”
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‘Choices’
Britain’s sixth prime minister in six years will begin selecting his top staff after giving the now all-too-familiar new leader’s address from the steps of Number 10 at approximately 11:35 a.m. on Wednesday before taking part in his first round of “Prime Minister’s Questions” in parliament.
After the markets have stabilized, Truss may decide to keep Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt in the position. Truss hired him 11 days ago in an unsuccessful attempt to save her leadership.
In the Telegraph, he backed Mr. Sunak on Sunday, saying he was a leader “ready to make the decisions essential for our long-term success.”
Hunt has warned that “tough choices” over public expenditure are imminent after revoking almost all of Truss’s varied tax cuts.
On October 31, Halloween, whoever is in charge of the Treasury will present the much-awaited medium-term budgetary plans of the government together with third-party evaluations.
To reconcile his splintered party, Mr. Sunak must also determine whether to bring to his cabinet prominent MPs who opposed him, such as Mordaunt.
His previous boss Johnson, who was forced out in July partly because of Mr. Sunak’s departure, is one so-called big beast who is unlikely to be given a place at the table.
Johnson allegedly pressed him to create a power-sharing alliance at their late-Saturday meeting.
The offer was rejected since the former leader only had a small number of Tory MPs publicly support him, unlike Mr. Sunak, who had over 100.
A day later, Johnson declared he would abandon his bold return due to political realities.
He agreed that “you can’t rule successfully until you have an unified party in parliament.”
“No mandate,”
Mr. Sunak, an affluent decedent of immigrants from India and East Africa, is the latest UK leader to hold office without receiving a clear mandate from the people. He is now facing demands for a general election.
According to a poll conducted by Ipsos on Monday, 62% of respondents want a vote before the end of the year.
The deputy leader of Labour, Angela Rayner, tweeted that he “has no mandate, no solutions, and no ideas.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of Scotland, repeated the remarks while recognizing the importance of Britain electing its first leader of color and calling for an independence vote to be held next year.
The next election isn’t scheduled to take place until at least January 2025, and opposition parties lack the power to compel one absent the consent of several Conservative MPs.
That seems improbable given that Labour has its highest lead in decades, according to a flurry of surveys.
Monday’s YouGov modeling revealed Mr. Sunak would have difficulty winning back support for the Tories and himself.
Keir Starmer, the head of Labour, was rated as the “best prime minister” in 389 seats, as opposed to Mr. Sunak’s 127, according to replies from 12,000 people over the weekend.