Former finance minister Rishi Sunak will be the United Kingdom’s next prime minister after seeing off his lone remaining rival, Penny Mordaunt, on Monday.
Sunak, 42, will become the first person of colour to lead the UK, and the youngest to do so in more than 200 years.
The contest was staged after Liz Truss quit as prime minister, becoming Britain’s shortest-serving leader ever following a disastrous term.
Rishi Sunak was the only person formally nominated to become the Conservative leader, meaning the planned week-long contest no longer needed to continue.
Instead, Sunak will spend Monday preparing to take over at Downing Street.
That will happen after outgoing Prime Minister Liz Truss visits King Charles III to formally resign.
Charles will accept her resignation, and then welcome Sunak for a meeting and ask him to form a government.
We don’t yet know whether those meetings will take place on Monday or on Tuesday.
Britain’s King Charles III will be heading back to London from the private royal estate of Sandringham Monday afternoon, as had always been his plan, CNN understands. But each side may need an extra day until they’re ready to go ahead with the handover of power.
CNN also understands that there has been no alteration to his schedule in light of this weekend’s events or today’s announcement.
It is not clear whether the King will host audiences at Buckingham Palace on Monday to accept the resignation of outgoing Prime Minister Liz Truss and appoint her successor Rishi Sunak, or whether that will happen later in the week.
Liz Truss, the outgoing and shortest-serving British prime minister, has congratulated Rishi Sunak on winning the race to replace her, less than two months after she defeated him in the year’s first Conservative leadership contest.
In a short and muted statement, Truss said Sunak has her “full support.”
Rishi Sunak, Britain’s third prime minister in seven weeks, will face the huge challenge of projecting stability after a period of historic political and financial market chaos. But his other task — shepherding the country through a recession — is poised to be just as daunting.
The pound rose against the US dollar as Sunak’s path to power cleared with the withdrawal of rival Boris Johnson earlier Monday, but was last down 0.2% to below $1.128. Yields on benchmark 10-year UK bonds, which move opposite prices, fell to 3.82%.
Sunak campaigned for the job over the summer with promises to help households tackle the rising cost of living, which is causing many to pull back spending. He said he would cut taxes, but only once price pressures eased.
Yet the economic outlook has deteriorated sharply since then — not least because of the market turmoil unleashed by Truss’ now-abandoned plan to slash taxes as soon as possible and boost government borrowing.
A closely watched gauge of economic activity dropped to a 21-month low in October. S&P Global, which tracks the data, said it effectively confirms the United Kingdom is in a recession.
“The heightened political and economic uncertainty has caused business activity to fall at a rate not seen since the global financial crisis in 2009, if pandemic lockdown months are excluded,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
As Truss’ disastrous tax cut plan proved, any economic stimulus beyond immediate support for energy bills could prove to be a nonstarter for Sunak.
“A key focus for the next Prime Minister and their chosen Chancellor needs to be fiscal responsibility,” Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said in a statement. “We need a credible plan to ensure that government debt can be expected to fall over the medium-term.”
It means yet more turnover at the heart of government – Boris Johnson and Truss both frantically reshuffled their Cabinets as they fought to save their jobs, and Sunak will be expected to bring in his own team this week.
But Sunak will face immediate calls for a general election from opposition parties, who will demand he seeks his own mandate in order to govern with any authority.
Rishi Sunak will become the first Hindu and the first person of colour to become Britain’s Prime Minister.
At the age of 42, he is also the youngest person to take the office in more than 200 years.
The result of Monday’s contest caps a spectacularly rapid rise to the pinnacle of British politics.
Sunak was first elected as an MP in 2015 and spent two years on the backbenches, during which Brexit dominated the political agenda. Sunak supported leaving the EU during the 2016 referendum.
He subsequently became a junior minister in Theresa May’s government. It was Boris Johnson who gave Sunak his first major government role when he first appointed him as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2019, and as the Chancellor in 2020.
Sunak won popularity during the early weeks of the pandemic when he unveiled an extensive support plan for those unable to work during lockdown.
But the “Partygate” scandal that took down Boris Johnson also tarnished his reputation, and he became archrivals with Johnson after quitting his government earlier this year.
Sunak has remained tight-lipped on his policy plan in the last few days, but he was widely seen as the more moderate of the two candidates in the last leadership contest over the summer. Compared to Liz Truss, he took a softer line on matters like Brexit and the economy.
Mordaunt says Sunak has her “full support”
Rishi Sunak will become Britain’s Prime Minister after Penny Mordaunt said in a statement that “we all owe it to the country” to get behind him.
Mordaunt had been scrambling to get enough support from MPs to make the final ballot in the leadership race, while Sunak passed the threshold comfortably.
“This decision is an historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support,” Mordaunt tweeted.
