Rishi Sunak is to become Britain’s 57th Prime Minister after both Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt pulled out of the race to be the next Tory leader.
He will be Britain’s first non-white Prime Minister as well as the youngest Prime minister in more than a century.
The ex-chancellor gained the support of well over half of Tory MPs, with Mordaunt struggling to reach the threshold of 100 MPs to get on the ballot.
Ms Mordaunt tweeted ‘This decision is an historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support’.
Sunak has vowed to ‘fix the economy’ having previously been critical of Liz Truss’ economic policies. In a statement made on Sunday, he promised ‘There will be integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government I lead.’
He now has the daunting task of leading the nation through an economic crisis with public finances, high inflation, stretched public services, industrial unrest, soaring energy bills and even the possibility of blackouts in the new year. But, he is at least familiar to most as the economic face of Covid having been responsible for the Furlough scheme and the “Eat out to Help out” campaign which came later.
The new PM is expected to take office within the next few days now the result of the Tory leadership contest has been confirmed.
We here at Aston Bond welcome our new prime minister and hope he can bring stability to our economy in what has been a turbulent year for the country.