Rishi Sunak officially took over as Britain’s 57th prime minister on Tuesday, vowing to fix the mistakes made by his predecessor, Liz Truss, and quickly starting to form a cabinet with an emphasis on continuity and stability.
In one of his most important appointments, Mr. Sunak selected Jeremy Hunt to remain as chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hunt assumed the role early this month in a bid by Ms. Truss to calm the market turmoil caused by her sweeping tax cut plan. He quickly reversed virtually all of her proposals.
Mr. Sunak decided to keep James Cleverly, who supported Boris Johnson in the most recent leadership contest, in the foreign secretary post. Ben Wallace, who has built a high profile as defense secretary, also keeps his post. Wallace had supported Boris Johnson in the leadership race.
Mr. Sunak also reappointed Suella Braverman, who resigned as home secretary only last week, ostensibly because of a breach of security rules. Having her in his cabinet is a gesture to the party’s right-wing: She is a hard-liner on cutting immigration numbers.
The 42-year-old son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Sunak won the Conservative Party contest to replace Ms. Truss on Monday, just seven weeks after she took power. Now, he confronts the twin challenge of reunifying his fractured party and navigating Britain through its gravest economic crisis in a generation.
Some Britons fear Sunak is too rich to understand working-class suffering
One thing is clear about Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak — he is rich, ultrarich. To some, he is way too rich.
The Times of London estimated that Mr. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, were worth more than $800 million, and this week, as Mr. Sunak emerged as the winner of the Tory leadership contest, critics immediately picked up on that. They accused him of being out of touch and wondered how a multimillionaire was going to preside over a country where more and more people face tough trade-offs between affording basic goods and warming their homes. /Argumentum.al with the NYT
