Rishi Sunak has been declared as the new leader of the Conservative party and therefore the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.
This comes as Penny Mordaunt, the other Conservative candidate to officially announce an intention to stand to replace Liz Truss as prime minister, failed to reach the requisite 100 MP backers by the 2pm deadline today.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson had also been tipped to stand but pulled out of the race on Sunday evening, saying he’d reached the required support but that standing “would not be the right thing to do”.
Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Boris Johnson’s government from 2020 to 2022 and has been the MP for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015, succeeding William Hague.
The new prime minister comes into Number 10 faced with an array of dilemmas to deal with. Many of the debates that entangled Liz Truss remain: tax cuts, public spending, immigration, post-Brexit policy, energy, housing, the NHS, and a deeply divided party to boot.
It remains to be seen how Sunak will approach his new role, but stability and reason are likely to be the order of the day in the early stages of his tenure – especially so as to avoid the possibility of unravelling the steadying effect of Jeremy Hunt’s economic policy.
