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After the resignation of Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, 45 days after her election on September 5 by 0.1% of the UK population, it is Rishi Sunak's turn to take power, elected unopposed as leader of the Conservative Party.
Boris Johnson's resignation in July of this year left the choice of the country's next prime minister in the hands of the 200,000 members of the Conservative party. The election among these 0.3% of the British population led to the victory of Liz Truss, the country's former foreign minister. After a disastrous collapse of the British economy and polls showing that only 9% of the population had a positive opinion of her, she too announced her resignation on October 20.
Former finance minister Rishi Sunak is the new British prime minister, having received the vote of 60,000 Conservative party members in the previous leadership race, or one in 1,100 Britons.
A portrait of the new prime minister
Rishi Sunak, a former banker, and his wife Akshata Murty, daughter of a prominent Indian billionaire, have an estimated fortune of £730 million, or more than $1.1 billion Canadian. This fortune has caused quite a stir, as it makes Sunak the first Prime Minister in British history with a fortune larger than the Royal Family.
The couple's wealth comes primarily from Murty's father's controversial company, Infosys, which has been repeatedly accused of tax and visa fraud in the United States. Murty herself was at the center of a scandal when it was discovered that she was avoiding paying British taxes on the money she generated overseas.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak boasted this summer to senior Conservative party officials that he had tried to reverse funding formulas "that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas" in order to help the richer cities.
"I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class... well not working class but..." the new British Prime Minister could be heard saying in an interview with the BBC.
While British workers struggle to pay their energy bills, which have more than tripled in less than a year, and inflation approaches 11%, the virtually unelected Prime Minister spends his weekends in his $11 million mansion.