Crowned UK prime minister

Rishi Sunak to be crowned UK prime minister after last remaining rival drops out

Penny Mordaunt’s decision to quit the race avoids the need for a vote by Conservative Party members — and caps a stunning comeback for Sunak.

BY ELENI COUREA

Rishi Sunak will be the next prime minister of the U.K. after his last remaining rival Penny Mordaunt dropped out of the contest.

Sunak, the former chancellor, amassed support from more than 180 Conservative MPs to succeed Liz Truss, who resigned last Thursday after a chaotic six weeks in office.

It caps a remarkable political comeback for Sunak, who just last month was defeated in a head-to-head contest with Truss and was not included in her top team.

Mordaunt, who trailed Sunak in terms of support from her parliamentary colleagues, announced on Monday that she would withdraw from the contest and endorse Sunak. “This decision is an historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party,” she said of the man who will now become the U.K.’s first British-Asian prime minister. “Rishi has my full support.”

Her decision avoids the need for a vote by Conservative Party members, who would have been balloted this week had more candidates made it past the threshold.

Instead, Sunak will now automatically be appointed prime minister. The 42-year-old is expected take office either Monday or Tuesday once a meeting with King Charles III has been agreed. Truss remains prime minister until the formal hand-over.

Confirming the news, Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers which oversees leadership elections, said Monday he had received just one nomination for the leadership.

“Rishi Sunak is therefore elected as leader of the Conservative Party,” he told Tory MPs, who banged desks and cheered in the oak-paneled House of Commons committee room where they had gathered to hear the result. Sunak will address Tory MPs at 2.30 p.m.

Although Sunak faces pressure from the opposition Labour Party to call a general election, under the U.K.’s parliamentary system he will be under no obligation to do so until January 2025, as he now commands the confidence of the largest party in the House of Commons.

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Sunak’s coronation also follows a decision by Boris Johnson to pull out of the contest. The former prime minister, who was ousted in July, had been mulling a second tilt at the job after a weekend spent canvassing Tory MPs.

But Johnson said on Sunday evening that it was “not the right time” for him to attempt a comeback and suggested he would not be able to govern effectively without “a unity party in parliament”.

Critic of ‘fairytale’ economics

Sunak was chancellor for over two years and steered the U.K. economy through the coronavirus pandemic before resigning in the summer in an act that helped bring down Johnson’s premiership.

He stood in the Tory leadership race over the summer and made the run-off but was defeated in the ballot of party members, 57.4 percent of whom opted for Truss.

During the contest, Sunak was a staunch critic of Truss’ economic program, using a live TV debate to tell her: “Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan, it’s a fairytale.” He warned presciently that Truss’ debt-funded tax-cutting policies would push up interest rates and people’s mortgage payments.

Sunak faced controversy in the spring when it was revealed that his wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian billionaire, claimed a tax status that meant she did not have to pay U.K. tax on her income abroad. She later announced that she would do so from now on.

He will be tasked with turning around Conservative Party fortunes after a precipitous drop in the polls and a disastrous Truss budget that spooked markets and hiked borrowing costs amid soaring inflation.

Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said Sunak had been appointed to the top job “without him saying a single word about how he would run the country and without anyone having the chance to vote,” as she repeated the opposition’s call for a general election. “Rishi Sunak has no mandate and no idea what working people need,” she added.