Rishi Sunak becomes UK PM after meeting King Charles

Rishi Sunak today became the U.K.’s third prime minister of the year following a meeting with King Charles III.

The tradition sees the monarch invite the leader of the party with the highest number of MPs to form a government, which since the 2019 general election has been the Conservatives.

Sunak was elected party leader by fellow Conservative lawmakers on Monday following the?resignation of Liz Truss on Thursday.

Truss held her final cabinet meeting Tuesday morning. In a speech outside 10 Downing Street, she said: ?It has been a huge honor to be prime minister of this great country, in particular to lead the country in mourning the death of Her Majesty the Queen after 70 years of service and the accession of his Majesty King Charles III.?

Truss only took office on Sept. 6. She cited her short-lived administration?s accomplishments as supporting households and businesses with energy bills and reversing the planned rise in national insurance tax, one of the only tax cuts that remained from the package of fiscal policies she was forced to reverse after market chaos.

Repeating themes she campaigned and governed on, she said: ?We simply cannot afford to be a low-growth country, where the government takes up an increasing share of our national wealth, and where there are huge divides between parts of the country. We need to take advantage of our Brexit freedoms to do things differently.?

?It means lower taxes so people can keep more of the money they earn. And it means delivering growth that will lead to more job security, higher wages and more opportunities for our children and grandchildren.?

Sunak is due to make his first address as prime minister later Tuesday, and is also expected to begin appointing new cabinet figures in yet another reshuffle at the top of British politics.

The 42-year-old will be the youngest U.K. prime minister since 1812, and the first person of color to lead the country, which U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday was ?a groundbreaking milestone.? Sunak?s parents are of Indian descent and in the 1960s moved from East Africa to the U.K.

Sunak also has the greatest personal wealth of any of his predecessors. His wife, Akshata Murthy, is daughter of Indian IT company Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana?Murthy, and the couple have a combined net worth of ?730 million ($824 million),?according to?the Sunday Times Rich List, making them the joint 222nd wealthiest people in the U.K.

Earlier this year, Murthy?made headlines?over her non-domiciled tax status, which allows her to avoid paying millions in U.K. taxes on international earnings. She said she would start paying U.K. taxes on these earnings following the controversy.

Before entering politics, Sunak worked as an analyst as Goldman Sachs and a partner at billionaire Chris Hohn?s Children?s Investment Fund Management. He was privately educated in the U.K. and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford,?like four prime ministers and dozens of senior political figures before him, followed later by an MBA at Stanford University.

He was elected Conservative MP for a constituency in North Yorkshire in the 2015 general election, and was finance minister under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson from February 2020 to July 2022. Through this he oversaw the U.K.?s economic response to the pandemic, including the program for furloughing millions of workers.

He ran for party leadership following Johnson?s resignation in July and was supported by MPs into the two-candidate battle against Truss, but lost in a vote by the Conservative Party?s roughly 200,000 members, who backed Truss against Sunak by 57% to 42.6%.

Many members favored Truss??strong stance on slashing taxes and regulation?as soon as she took office, which Sunak warned was misguided at a time of central bank tightening and?increased spending on energy bill support. His warnings that the plan would cause a sell-off in British assets including gilts (sovereign bonds) and sterling?proved prophetic. (CNBC)