Rishi Sunak: 3 anecdotes about the new British Prime Minister

A new Prime Minister has been appointed. This Monday, October 14, the conservative Rishi Sunak was appointed by members of his party as the new head of the British government. He therefore comes to succeed Liz Truss who had nevertheless won against him the race for the post of Prime Minister a few weeks ago.

However, after 44 days in office, she made the decision to resign from her post. “I have to admit, that given the situation, I cannot honor the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. So I spoke to His Majesty the King to tell him that I was resigning my position. position of leader of the Conservative Party”, she said.

Born on May 12, 1980 in Southampton, in the South of England, to a general practitioner father and a pharmacist mother, nothing predestined Rishi Sunak to become head of the British government.

“My family emigrated here 60 years ago. [My mother] ran the local pharmacy in Southampton. That’s where I grew up, in the shop, delivering medicine. I worked as a waiter at the Indian restaurant at the end of the street”, he said during the campaign. “I am here thanks to the hard work, sacrifice and love of my parents”.

However, the politician still quickly began to associate with the elite. Before becoming Head of the Treasury and then Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to the Minister of Finance in France), he built an important career in finance.

Winchester College, Oxford and then Stanford universities in the United States, the curator attended prestigious establishments to train. He followed a course in politics, economics and philosophy.

Despite his image as the top of the class, the new Prime Minister did not escape controversy, one in particular had erupted while he was minister. It concerned the financial situation of his wife.

In April 2022, the British newspaper The Independent revealed that Akshata Murty, wife of Rishi Sunak, then Minister of Finance, benefited from the tax status of “not domiciled” in the United Kingdom, which allowed her to make millions of pounds in income. savings on taxes when inflation was already high across the Channel.

Faced with the controversy, she then immediately announced that her income abroad would now be taxed in the United Kingdom. “I do it because I want to, not because the regulations require me to,” she said at the time.

The fortune available to the couple is also the subject of criticism since it is particularly important and even surpasses that of King Charles III.

Rishi Sunak would be the first male head of government to be wealthier than the ruling monarch. This was revealed a few days ago by The Guardian. Indeed, the British daily specifies that the new Prime Minister and his wife would have a heritage of approximately 730 million pounds sterling, or more than 835 million euros.

With such a fortune, Rishi Sunak is the first politician in the country to appear on the list of the richest people in the United Kingdom compiled by the Sunday Times. For comparison, the fortune of the new Commonwealth King Charles III and Queen Camilla is between 300 and 350 million pounds sterling, or less than 401 million euros. Thus, the fortune of the new Prime Minister and his wife would therefore be twice that of the monarch.