Rishi Sunak, who resigned as chancellor this week, has formally announced he is standing to succeed Boris Johnson as Conservative party leader, joining the race as one of the favourites.
The announcement came in a slickly edited three-minute video posted on Twitter that emphasised the story of his parents, who emigrated to the UK from India.
“Let me tell you a story … I’m standing to be the next leader of the Conservative party and your prime minister,” he said. “Let’s restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country.”
Saying Britain faced “serious challenges”, Sunak strongly indicated he would resist calls for widespread tax cuts or a spending spree.
“Do we confront this moment with honesty, seriousness and determination, or do we tell ourselves comforting fairy tales that might make us feel better in the moment, but will make our children worse off tomorrow?” he said.
Sunak resigned from Johnson’s government on Tuesday evening, saying the public expected government to be conducted “properly, competently and seriously”. His resignation, minutes after the departure of Sajid Javid as health secretary, helped spark the crisis that led to Johnson announcing on Thursday that he would quit as Tory leader.
Sunak immediately started to gather endorsements from Tory MPs, among them Mark Spencer, the leader of the Commons; the former chief whip Mark Harper, and the Guildford MP, Angela Richardson.
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While an established presence in UK politics, Sunak, 42, has only been an MP since 2015, a minister since 2018 and was chancellor for a little over two years.
His public profile soared during the Covid pandemic thanks to his largesse with billions of pounds of public money via the furlough scheme, and an approach to press conferences that often appeared more empathic than Johnson’s.
He has, however, experienced controversy over his wealth and tax affairs. With a significant fortune of his own thanks to a pre-politics job in the hedge fund world, his wife, Akshata Murty, is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Infosys and owns a 0.93% stake, worth about £690m, in the tech firm.
In April it emerged that Murty claimed non-domicile status, allowing her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from Infosys, which totalled £11.6m in the last tax year.
After that revelation it emerged that Sunak had held a US green card, meaning he declared himself a “permanent US resident” for tax purposes for 19 months while he was chancellor and for six years as an MP.
Source: Guardian
