Rishi Sunak, Insosys founder Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law, is an odds-on favourite to become the UK’s next prime minister after his shock resignation as chancellor was key in toppling Boris Johnson.
Bookies are giving Sunak 4/1 chances of landing the top job after Johnson announced he would quit as prime minister, sparking the leadership race.
Sunak’s virtually simultaneous resignation with Sajid Javid as health secretary three days ago, proved to be the final nail in Johnson’s political coffin, triggering the exodus of more than 50 other government ministers. Sunak has already set up a temporary campaign office at a London hotel near the Houses of Parliament, according to British media.
The Guardian newspaper quoted one unnamed MP as saying they supported the right-wing Eurosceptic Sunak “purely on the basis that he is clearly the most competent.” Many MPs see him as best-equipped to come up with a coherent strategy to counter Britain’s growing economic crisis in wake of Brexit.
Sunak is ahead of Minister of State for Trade Penny Mordaunt, who’s being given odds of 5/1. Similarly, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace also has odds of 5/1. Polling firm JL Partners says its survey of 2,000 people makes Sunak currently the lead with the public and in a head-to-head question about who would make the better prime minister, slightly ahead of Keir Starmer, leader of the main Opposition Labour Party.
For Sunak, it’s a major comeback after it looked like he might be forced to exit British politics because of a controversy about his wife Akshata Murthy’s wealth and her claim to non-resident status to lower her tax bill. Akshata, who owns a large chunk of Infosys shares, was recently estimated to be worth around 700 million pounds.
One sign of Sunak’s frontrunner status came when he was attacked by Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, an ardent Johnson loyalist. Rees-Mogg didn’t hold back, saying: “He was not a successful chancellor, he was a high tax chancellor” and accused him of abjectly failing at fighting inflation.
Javid, who is of Pakistani origin, has not announced whether he’ll be in the race for the prime minister’s job but is said to be considering it. He’s being given odds of 7/1 by the bookies.
The contenders
One of the first out of the starting blocks was Goan-origin politician Suella Braverman, who declared in a prime-time TV interview that: “I will put my hat into the ring.” Braverman, 42, who’s attorney general and another Brexiteer, is unlikely to get far in the contest but she’s thought to be laying the ground to establish herself as a familiar face for the future.
Another Indian-origin minister, hardline Home Secretary Priti Patel, is keeping a low profile but is regarded as almost certainly sizing up her chances in what pundits say could be wide-open contest, a process expected to be completed before the Conservative party conference in October.
As the equivalent of our home minister, Patel could claim she’s got good credentials to be prime minister. But her hard-line immigration policies and reputation for bullying staff have made her an unpopular figure in British politics and bookies don’t rate her chances of winning highly.
Thinnest of threads
As potential successors lined up for his job, Johnson is hanging in there by the thinnest of threads after his premiership was sunk by a series of lies and scandals. Johnson’s speech Thursday afternoon created confusion with some news organisations declaring exit as prime minister would be immediate. Later, it became clear he had resigned as leader of the Conservative Party but would hang on as caretaker prime minister until a successor was chosen.
Johnson’s desire to stay on at Number 10 Downing Street triggered a furious response from ex-British prime minister John Major who believed Johnson could be a loose cannon if he remained in office. Major noted Johnson would retain “the power of patronage and, of even greater concern, the power to make decisions. He insisted Johnson should leave office immediately and a caretaker prime minister be appointed.
Johnson’s six-minute speech was punchy and unrepentant, and he lashed out at his colleagues, saying: “I’ve tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we’re delivering so much… But as we’ve seen at Westminster, the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves.”
'Them's the breaks'
Johnson named 12 new ministers to replace those he had lost but there have been so many departures over two days that it would have been virtually impossible to fill all the vacant posts and the country would have been left without a functioning government.
Johnson also hammered home the point that at the last election, the party won its biggest majority since 1987 and he’d been largely responsible for the landslide win. He apologised for not being able to fulfil the mandate he had been given, but added in a moment of levity, “Them’s the breaks.”
His speech culminated two days of farce after Sunak and Javid’s resignations triggered the race for the exits by Conservative MPs. One joke doing the Westminster rounds was that the House of Commons would soon run out of letterhead paper on which to send resignations. In India, Twitter lit up with jokes comparing the British political situation to the Maharashtra crisis where 45 MLAs switched sides and abandoned former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
'Saviour to assassin'
One of the most dramatic volte-faces was by Nadhim Zahawi who accepted late Wednesday the second-most senior job as Sunak’s replacement and 24 hours later told Johnson it was time to go. The tabloid Daily Mail said Zahawi, who won kudos for Britain’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, had gone from “saviour to assassin.”
The Kurdish-origin Zahawi had been plotting a leadership run for weeks, the Daily Mail said. He was said to have hired Sir Lynton Crosby, Johnson’s election guru, as an advisor some months ago.
The final blow that unravelled Johnson’s premiership was his denial that he had known about the MP he had named deputy chief whip had a long history of making unwanted sexual advances toward young men.
The final straw
Finally, a top retired civil servant issued a stinging letter revealing Johnson had been personally briefed about sexual abuses by the aptly named Christopher Pincher. It was the final straw after a string of scandals including lying about attending parties at Downing Street during stringent pandemic lockdowns.
“I have gone out and defended this government both publicly and privately. We are, however, now past the point of no return,” declared Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis in his resignation letter.
The Conservative Party’s worries about Johnson gained ground after it recently lost two by-election seats pointing to the fact that voters were finally tired of the charismatic Johnson’s antics. The vote-winning Johnson now was turning into a vote-loser.
Half a dozen candidates
At least half a dozen key candidates are now poised to run to replace Johnson who was responsible for leading the UK out of the European Union, a move that has proved to be an economic disaster.
Wallace, who’s one of the frontrunners, has shown himself to be a none-too-steady pair of hands. In front of TV cameras, he declared Russian President Vladimir Putin had “gone full tonto (a Spanish word for stupid)” in invading Ukraine. He followed it up with a foolish attempt at potted history, saying: “The Scots Guards kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas in 1853 in Crimea. We can always do it again.” Wallace, an ex-army officer, served in the Scots Guards.
Similarly, another potential front-runner, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, has been trying to build her kick-ass image by posing in a tank and making tough statements about the Russia-Ukraine war.
What’s certain is there will be more chaos in the coming days. For outsiders, it could be an entertaining spectacle as the world’s oldest democracy endures very modern-day total political turmoil. And, if Sunak gets the job, it would be the ultimate example of the empire striking back 75 years after Indian Independence.
