Britain’s latest PM is ‘richer than King’
Rishi Sunak will set several records when he takes over as the United Kingdom’s prime minister on Tuesday (local time), but it’s his wealth that is most eye-opening.
He and wife Akshata Murty are worth an estimated £730 million ($1.3 billion), according to The Sunday Times‘ annual rich list, which was released earlier this year.
That makes Mr Sunak one of the wealthiest politicians in Britain – and richer than the monarch, King Charles, who will invite him to form government.
The same rich list estimated the then Queen Elizabeth’s net worth at £370 million.
The son of a GP father and pharmacist mother, who were Indian migrants, Mr Sunak was raised in a middle-class family in the port city of Southampton and says he inherited their hard-working ethos.
“I grew up working in the shop, delivering medicines,” he said during the campaign earlier this year.
“I worked as a waiter at the Indian restaurant down the street.”
Mr Sunak has described how his parents saved money to send him to one of Britain’s most expensive boarding schools, Winchester College, where he mingled with the elite.
After high school, he studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University — the degree of choice for future prime ministers — then got an MBA at Stanford University.
From 2001 to 2004, Mr Sunak worked in finance for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and was later a partner in two hedge funds.
While living in the USA he met his wife, heiress Akshata Murty, – the daughter of India’s sixth-richest man dubbed India’s Bill Gates – at Stanford.
Forbes has estimated her father N R Narayana Murty’s wealth from founding the multi-national IT company Infosys at £4.4billion ($7.8 billion).
Ms Murty herself is said to have a £690m ($1.2 billion) stake in the firm and receives annual dividend payments on the shares, which last year added up to £11.6m ($20.75 million), reports the BBC.
She came under the spotlight earlier this year, while her husband was UK Chancellor, when it was revealed she did not have to pay tax on her overseas earnings because she held non-domiciled status.
The practice was legal, but it looked bad at a time when Mr Sunak was raising taxes for millions of Britons.
Ms Murty later announced she would change her arrangements and pay tax.
The couple reportedly owns four properties together estimated to be worth $26 million including a manor house in the village of Kirby Sigston, a five-bedroom townhouse and a flat in South Kensington and a penthouse apartment with views of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California.
Marrying Ms Murty propelled Mr Sunak from the wealthy middle class to rubbing shoulders with the UK’s richest.
In a political party already full of the country’s moneyed and aristocrats, he is said to be one of the richest politicians in the House of Commons.
Mr Sunak, 42, will also be Britain’s youngest PM in two centuries, and its first of Indian origin.
He replaces Liz Truss, who lasted just 44 days before she resigned, needing to restore stability to a country reeling from years of political and economic turmoil, and seeking to lead a party that has fractured along ideological lines.
Mr Sunak told Conservative MPs on Monday that they faced an “existential threat” and must “unite or die”.
He told the country it faced a “profound economic challenge”.
“We now need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together,” he said.
Mr Sunak will be expected to launch deep spending cuts to try to rebuild Britain’s fiscal reputation as the country slides into one of the toughest downturns in decades, hit by the surging cost of energy and food.
A recent mini budget by Ms Truss, which triggered her downfall, pushed up borrowing costs and mortgage rates, and sent investors fleeing.
British government bonds rallied aggressively in the run-up to Mr Sunak’s victory, and extended their gains on Monday.
He will also have to work hard to hold the Tories together after some accused him of treachery earlier this year when he resigned from the cabinet of former leader Boris Johnson, triggering his downfall too.
Other Conservatives say Mr Sunak is too rich to understand the day-to-day economic pressures building in Britain, and worry whether he could win an election for a party that has been in power for 12 years.
Mr Johnson led his party to a landslide victory in 2019, only to be driven out of office less than three years later after a series of scandals.
His successor Mr Truss lasted just over six weeks before she too was forced out.
Political biographer Anthony Seldon told Reuters that Mr Sunak had the most difficult economic and political inheritance of any British leader since World War II and would be constrained by the mistakes made by his predecessor Mr Truss.
“There is no leeway on him being anything other than extraordinarily conservative and cautious,” he said.
Amid the turmoil, polls show that Britons want an election.
The Conservatives do not have to hold one until January 2025.
Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the Conservatives had “crowned Rishi Sunak as prime minister without him saying a single word about how he would run the country and without anyone having the chance to vote”.
Labour has held record leads in opinion polls of more than 25 points since Ms Truss’s budget sent shock waves through financial markets.
Economists and investors welcomed Mr Sunak’s appointment but questioned whether he can tackle the country’s finances while holding the party’s warring factions together.
Many Conservative MPs appeared relieved that the party had at least selected a new leader quickly.
Penny Mordaunt, who lost out to Mr Sunak, said his election was a “historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party”, she said.
“Rishi has my full support.”
The first real test of unity will come on October 31, when finance minister Jeremy Hunt – the fourth person in the role in four months – is due to present a budget to plug a black hole in the public finances that is expected to have ballooned to up to £40 billion.
-with AAP