Former British Chancellor of Indian origin Rishi Sunak would make a good Prime Minister
Conservative MP and Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker has said that former Indian-origin British Chancellor Rishi Sunak would make a good prime minister after Britain’s troubled Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned. Baker told ITV’s Peston, “I think the country needs to change direction. Rishi will be a good prime minister. There are many people in our party who can be good prime ministers.”
With only 45 days in office, Truss resigned on Thursday, saying she would remain as prime minister until a successor was chosen, which would be within a week. Speaking outside the 10 Downing Street office, Truss admitted that he failed to deliver on the promises he had made while running for Conservative leader (during the election), and that he had lost the confidence of his party. “I agree that given the situation, I cannot give the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” she said. So I spoke to Her Majesty and informed her that I was resigning as Leader of the Conservative Party.
Barely two months after losing to Liz Truss in the race for UK prime minister, Sunak is once again emerging as the favorite with 100 Tory MPs to consider a no-confidence motion against him. A UGA poll of Tory members found that 55 percent were voting for Sunak, while only 25 percent would vote for Truss.
According to a Bloomberg report, Conservative lawmakers are divided over who should take charge. Baker told ITV Peston, “Rebel Conservative MPs are destroying the party’s ability to run a government.” Sunak’s warnings about the truss’s economic plans have come to the fore, which gives him credibility with the markets.
Yet he still has a large number of enemies in the Tory party, Bloomberg pointed out. There are about 100 lawmakers on the party’s ideological right—including ardent Brexiters and Johnson supporters—who are determined to stop Sunak. Sunak was blamed for the downfall of former PM Boris Johnson. Bloomberg reported that one minister warned that choosing Sunak would lead to even more Tory fighting.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is also being seen as a PM candidate. But he told Sky News that he had refused to become prime minister due to family reasons. PLC/GT
