Opinion Express View: A moment in history, of possibilities: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is young, just 42, and a person of colour. His appointment is historic because he is the first non-white leader of the country. Yet, at the same time, it is also true that by almost any other yardstick, the Sunak story of rise to power is not an underdog tale. His education took him from elite preparatory schools to Oxford and then Stanford. Currently, his net worth — in large part due to the fortune of his wife, Akshata Murthy — is estimated to exceed that of King Charles and his Queen Consort. At a time when large parts of the UK are grappling with a cost of living crisis and many are struggling as a result of inflation and economic inequality, Sunak’s term in office, some fear, might be shaped, even constricted, by the view from the top of the pyramid. More important clues to the future may lie in the kind of politics Sunak has subscribed to as he rose to power: A staunch supporter of Brexit, he has consistently taken a hard line on immigration. In essence, Rishi Sunak is a politician in the Boris Johnson mould, in a Britain that seems to be, culturally and politically, closing in on itself.

It is on the economic and trade fronts that Sunak has proved his mettle. His handling of the British economy as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the pandemic has been largely lauded and he has spoken consistently of the need for greater foreign investment and trade. After Liz Truss’s brief premiership ended due to poor economic policy, it is important for Sunak to live up to his reputation and promise. The figure of PM Sunak is also significant for what it says about the evolution of the Conservative Party. As divorced as Sunak may be from the experiences of the middle class struggling with price rise, his background and his journey bear testament to the possibilities contained in the movement of people and capital across borders. In that sense, by virtue of his ethnicity and religion — as the child of Indian-origin parents, and as a practising Hindu, a religious minority in the UK — he has breached a Conservative wall that deserved to come down in a multi-cultural society. Sunak’s challenge now will be to unite the party after its prolonged crisis of leadership and to display the political acumen that being the prime minister of a lively and deeply entrenched parliamentary democracy requires.

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Part of the challenge that stares at him is also made of this: Sunak is a product of the very forces that stand in opposition to the post-Brexit Conservative Party — globalisation, diversity in language, religion, culture, and immigration. Would his story be possible with the “hard” immigration policies that he himself has championed? His tenure could pave a way to moving beyond these schisms, to arrive at a Conservative politics that represents a view of economic governance and liberalism, not parochialism. The current juncture in the global zeitgeist is often described as one in which democracy and liberal values are under threat from their own weaknesses and Britain’s inward turn with Brexit in 2016 only seemed to confirm these forebodings. Now, Sunak can serve as an important symbol in the redefinition of what it means to be British and multi-cultural in the 21st century.