Rishi Sunak, on Monday emerged as the leader of UK’s Conservative Party and consequently the next Prime Minister of the country.
His victory was announced by Sir Graham Brady, after receiving the most nomination from Members of Parliament.
Sunak is expected to form a new government soon after meeting and conferring with the new British monarch, King Charles III.
The New Diplomat looks into the biography of the incoming Prime Minister of UK. Below here are some of the findings;
1). Sunak was born on 12 May 1980. His parents are immigrants who came to the UK from east Africa and are both of Indian extraction. Sunak was born in Southampton, where his father was a GP and his mother ran a pharmacy.
2). He was educated at Winchester College, read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, and gained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar.
3). While studying at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys. Sunak and Murty are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022.
4). After graduating, Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms, the Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners.
5). He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
6). Sunak became prominent politically after he was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond in North Yorkshire at the 2015 general election, succeeding William Hague.
7). One of Sunak’s major political moves is supporting Brexit in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. In 2016, he wrote a report for the Centre for Policy Studies (a Thatcherite think tank) supporting the establishment of free ports after Brexit, and the following year wrote a report advocating the creation of a retail bond market for small and medium-sized enterprises.
8). Sunak was appointed as chief secretary to the Treasury by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 24 July 2019, serving under Chancellor Sajid Javid.
9). He became more popular in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Various polls showed Sunak remained overwhelmingly popular among Conservative supporters and other Britons throughout 2020. Sunak was prominent in the government’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, including the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out schemes.
10) Sunak, a practicing Hindu, is now set to be the first British Prime Minister of Asian descent.
[24/10, 5:03 pm] Akins^2: PDP Crisis: Wike Reveals Why Atiku, Ayu’s Pictures Are Missing On Rivers Campaign Posters
Nwosa
Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike on Monday, explained why the pictures of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) 2023 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the party’s National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, are missing from PDP campaign posters in the state.
According to the governor, Atiku did not consult him before he picked members of his campaign council from Rivers.
Wike who spoke at the inauguration of the Rivers State PDP Campaign Council in Port Harcourt, the state capital, claimed Atiku selected “enemies” of Rivers into his campaign council for the 2023 general elections.
In his words, “Some people have asked me why is it that they don’t see the presidential candidate’s picture (and) the party chairman’s? I said what are you talking about? The presidential candidate entered my state and picked members of the presidential council without a whole governor of a state having a contribution,” he said.
“The presidential candidate entered Rivers State and picked those he wants to pick without the contribution of the governor. So, they said they don’t need me to campaign for them, that they don’t need Rivers people to campaign for them. Will you force yourself?
“I have never seen how people will disrespect a state like Rivers State and go and choose those who are enemies of the state without the contributions of us,”
It would be recalled that Wike and four other governors snubbed the kick-off event of the party’s presidential campaign sending a strong statement that the disunity in the party might cost the party the 2023 General Election.
Wike alongside his allies had demanded Ayu should resign on the grounds that both the presidential candidate and the National Chairman of the party cannot be northerners. He argued that the National Chairmanship of the party should automatically be zoned to the south to give room for equity and fairness.
