The Conservative Party has yet another new leader and the country will have its third Prime Minister in short succession with Rishi Sunak taking the top position.
His role was assured following the withdrawl from the race to replace Liz Truss by Penny Mordaunt today (October 24).
This afternoon on Twitter Ms Mordaunt said: “It is clear that colleagues feel we need certainty today…as a result, we have now chosen our next Prime Minister.
“This decision is an historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support.”
Rishi Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020.
He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond since 2015.
As Chancellor, Sunak was the lead 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.
He resigned as chancellor on 5 July, citing economic policy differences with then PM Boris Johnson. Sunak’s resignation, along with the resignation of Javid as Health Secretary, led to Johnson’s resignation amid a government crisis.
In July he stood in the Conservative party leadership election to replace Johnson and lost the members’ vote to Liz Truss.
Following Truss’s resignation after just 45 days as PM Sunak secured backing to become the new Party leader and PM.
The 42-year-old is set to become the first Prime Minister of colour in the United Kingdom and the youngest in modern times. The current record-holder David Cameron, was 43 when he became PM in 2010.
Mr Sunak will not be the youngest prime minister ever to hold the office in this country, that claim goes to William Pitt the Younger who was 24 when he first became prime minister in 1783.
A very handsome and intelligent young man. I’m confident he’ll do a wonderful job, without the constant drama of Boris or the sulking in parliament of Truss.
Tory blue-rinsed dragons in the party have been calling him Dishy Rishi.
So have I!
I call him “Fishy Rishi”. Don’t forget his back up plan was to work in the USA, where he has a super mansion, and who kept his Green Card in case he needed to bale from the UK in a hurry! He will cut welfare benefits for the poor, because that’s what the Tories do!
Tory blue rinse dragons rejected him a few weeks ago. They choose Lettuce Liz over him how’s that for an insult.
Labour membership chose Corbyn. That worked out well.
past tense Checkers
They realised their mistake
will the Tories recognise we need a GE
They’re both past tense. The BIG difference is that Tories learnt their mistake after 7 weeks, and it took Labour 4 years!
They only voted for Truss because she promised them tax cuts. Rishi knows there’s no money for tax cuts because he spent it all
I wonder why the wider Conservative membership didn’t vote him in, last time around?
Could it be because he spelled it out like it was, rather than Ms Truss’ vision of a halcyon, sunlit upland?
Is his wife still a non-dom?
No, she’s an Asian.
“Asian” refers to the question of her ethnicity. “Non dom” means not registered for tax purposes in the UK.
Mrs Sunak could be (and possibly still is) both.
Do I have to start labelling comments as a joke for you?
Jokes are usually recognisable by the humour or wit. So yes, maybe a good idea for you to add labels.
Hahaha, love it!
I wish to congratulate him and I wish him every success in the mammoth task that lays ahead, let’s hope the is the end to all the uncertainty, and that opposition parties I’ve him time and stop this relentless talk about a general election.
Richard Eastland – not forgetting that the ‘the mammoth task that lies ahead’ is the creation of his own party and the reason ‘the relentless talk about a general election’ is because we are on the third PM since the last one and therefore a fresh mandate is a democratic requirement.
For give the typing errors above
Hope he can select a decent team and go on do the very best for our lovely country. It will be a challenge !
Great news.
Aha! So it’s to be Rishi Sunak!
I’m glad they told me. It’s so much easier than being asked for my own opinion. Democracy is so overrated.
I see that the Tories have rigged the appointment of the next Prime Minister without even having to consult their own members, let alone the public.
And the Labour leadership are now in the process of vetting who is allowed to stand as a Labour MP by telling local constituency members around the country that they can only select candidates IF the London leadership approves of them. The latest case involved someone who expressed her relief that Scottish Nationalist leader, Nicola Sturgeon, didn’t have Covid. For expressing this humane opinion, she has been struck off the list of approved candidates!! Can’t have decent human beings standing for Labour! They might vote to help the people of the country!
Proper democracy is a wonderful thing. When will we actually try it?
MPs are clearly better at choosing a leader than the wider party membership are (Corbyn was a disaster for Labour, just as Truss was for Conservative!).
Congratulations to him. It’s great that a person of South Asian heritage has become the Prime Minister of the UK. I look forward to seeing him implementing policies that encourage social-justice and help other people of colour.
The Tories help people of ALL colours. “Positive discrimination” is for the hateful Left.
Peter,stop the sledging make your point without all the spitefulness.
After all you are supposed to be gracious.
Agree to disagree.
Yes sir bossman!
I think you are being a bit sarcastic/tongue-in-cheek, Elaine Hartrey.
Sunak is the richest MP in the House with a fabulously rich wife as well.
He already has a record of refusing to continue with the £20 increase to Benefits.
You don’t get to be as rich as he is by worrying about social-justice and helping people. You get rich by NOT worrying about other people. But I think you really know that!
Busted! Yes a little tongue-in-cheek, although I am genuinely pleased that a person colour will lead the Conservatives for a while. However, I feel pretty scared that a Prime Minister worth 730 million and a Chancellor worth 14 million are about to tell people on a minimum wage why austerity is good for them.
Chancellor? We don’t even know who he/she will be yet (as far as I’m aware, only Mordaunt said she’ll keep Hunt).
Don’t forget all the handouts that Rishi has given out. £150 Council tax rebate, £650 to all people on UC and other benefits to help with winter fuel bills, £400 off everybody’s energy bills over the next 6 months and doubling the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. Even though he’s rich and he’s a Tory he has already done more to help poor people than any Prime Minister in history.
Just remember though, somewhere down the line it will have to be paid for along with the cost of Covid.
Quite so. It’s not *his* money he’s giving us; it’s *ours*.
He has shown the way for everyone. Go to a top public school and marry into millions.
Indeed he is proof to all South Asian children, that if your parents send you to a 46k pa public school, you can become a banker and profit from the financial crash that led to 300k dying from austerity and then become PM.
Oh dear, another one of those envious “I hate the rich” brigade. Inverted-snobbism isn’t a good look.
Well at least the constituents of Uxbridge have their hard working MP back.
The Tories are drinking at the last chance saloon where the bar staff have called time and the police are about to eject the customers.There is very little time and a lot to do.
This govt is on borrowed time and an election will happen maybe not before Christmas but by no later than the spry.
You cannot have 3 PM’s in 2 months and expect the public to sit pat and hope they can extract the country from the mess it had been dropped in.It’s a bit like expecting Southern water to mend its ways and clean up its act by next year.It won’t happen without a miracle.Mr Sunak is reasonably competent but he is not a magician.
It may not be so catastrophic for the Tories but it will be bad.
Typo it should spring not spry but you get my meaning
Is the “Loonie Party” still active??? I will give them my vote!!! END OFF!!!
They’ve never been the same since Screaming Lord Sutch died (met him once, lovely chap).
Watch out locals, the 10 years of not sweeping the roads, litter picking,
weeding, or digging up grass clumps in the tatty neglected area of Thanet is about to get another dose.Mr Sunak wont be helping us.
.
I live in hope that someone will start prioritising, axeing things like Arts funding in favour of better services.
I agree, Peter. Arts funding is so over-rated and should be at the bottom of anyone’s list of priorities.
After all, contemporary art is so much trash with the most untalented trying to con the public. They get away with it because no one can be bothered to object.
i expect craigy boy to be so far up his ar*e that you will only see the soles of his shoes , still thats more than we normally see of him around here
I wish him well , I wouldn’t like his job ahead , but currently he’s probably the best person to unite the party and country.
I think he might find this is as good as it gets.One maybe two days while we wait for the autumn statement and then utter hell when the right find some taxes are going up and left find the NHS or social care gets some cuts.
The Tory party members want low taxes but the public want higher public spending the two objectives are irreconcilable.
Usually it’s a Labour government in this sort of mess,this will be a novel experience for many in the Tory party.
I’m hoping that we start seeing more equality for older people. I’m nearly 60, and if I lived in London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, I’d soon qualify for a free bus pass (which can also be used on some trains and even ferries in Scotland and Wales). Yet the rest of the UK has to wait an extra 8 years! This of course would also help reduce both congestion and pollution.
Peter, free bus passes were scrapped for 60 year olds by tories in England but not by labour authorities in London and wales
It should certainly be “levelled up” everywhere! I’d be using it almost daily if I had one.
Paid for from our taxes given to Scotland and Wales!
I waited 6 years thanks to Osborne and now bus services are disappearing faster than you can say ‘Liz Truss’.
The thing is PC, the actual pension is higher so that is some comfort, but take it as soon as you can, don’t put it off because of tax,I found out that if I had snuffed it my other other half would have only received 3 months money, and bearing in mind that I have been paying for over 50 years (not the qualifying 35), it would have made by transit to the next world, if you believe there is one, somewhat miserable.
Barry is right is was one of sneaky Osborne’s wheezes.As someone who is keen on buses I was most unhappy.
I haven’t heard Labour say that they’ll reverse these pension/bus pass delays. If they did, GN, I’d vote for them.
Tories or Labour, false illusion of choice in this puppet show, with the exception of a very few brave and independently minded MPs such as Sir Christopher Chope.
All change. Your my mate so you can have a job my buddy. What a merry go round . I’m getting giddy
Within minutes he was lying: he said he was “elected”. The small detail that not one person had cast a vote was cheerfully ignored. Then he talked about the Country’s “profound economic crisis” which obviously didn’t happen on his watch as Chancellor. His furlough scheme with massive fraud; a public sector spend exceeding £500 billion on a “lethal virus” with a global infection fatality rate of, 0.2%; unprecedented quantitive easing which unleashed hyper inflation – all a mere coincidence, so yes he’s the right man for the job!
Do you mind?! I got some lovely meals very cheaply during his “Eat out to help out” deal! My only disappointment is that he didn’t follow it up with a “Buy new trousers to hide your fatness” deal.
I have a dream the odious Suella Braverman, now Home Secretary, will get a one way ticket to Rwanda for breaching the Official Secrets Act! You couldn’t make it up!
What are you talking about. You just made it up.