The United Kingdom will vote on July 4 in a snap general election called by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. With his Conservative Party trailing the Labour Party by 21 points in the latest polls, Mr Sunak faces an uphill task to retain his party’s 14-year grip on power and own position as Prime Minister.
Here are a few facts about the current British Prime Minister:
1. Rishi Sunak was born on May 12, 1980, in Southampton, England. His grandparents were all born in India but migrated to East Africa for work and eventually settled in the UK. Mr Sunak went to Winchester College, a private boarding school in England and later graduated from Oxford University. He pursued an MBA at Stanford University, where he met his wife, Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy. They got married in 2009 and have two daughters together.
2. Before he forayed into politics, Mr Sunak had a successful career in finance. He worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs from 2001 to 2004 before becoming a partner at The Children’s Investment Fund Management in 2006. In 2010, he moved to Theleme Partners, another hedge fund management firm. He also served as the director of Catamaran Ventures, an investment firm owned by his father-in-law.
3. Mr Sunak’s political career took off in 2014 when he was chosen as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks). In 2015, he was elected a Member of Parliament for Richmond (Yorks), receiving 36.2% votes. His political ascension continued as he held various government positions, including Minister for Local Government in 2018, Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022.
4. In October 2022, Mr Sunak made history when King Charles III appointed him as Britain’s first Hindu and Indian-origin Prime Minister. Elected unopposed as the leader of the Conservative Party on Diwali, he became the youngest British Prime Minister in 210 years at 42.
5. As UK PM, Mr Sunak has courted controversies. In May 2024, he proposed restricting the UK’s post-study visa, which drew opposition from cabinet members. In 2022, Mr Sunak faced a tax scandal surrounding his wife’s non-domicile status. The same year, he was involved in another controversy over holding a US green card while serving as a British government minister. Mr Sunak also faced criticism for his role in the Partygate scandal, receiving a fixed-penalty notice for attending a birthday party for Boris Johnson during the lockdown in 2020.