🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Rishi Sunak

Prime Ministers · 21st century

Rishi Sunak

1980– · British

Conservative

In office: 2022–2024

Rishi Sunak became the UK's first British Asian and first Hindu prime minister in October 2022, succeeding Liz Truss and stabilising the public finances after her mini-budget. As Chancellor during the Covid-19 pandemic he had created the furlough scheme and Eat Out to Help Out. He agreed the Windsor Framework, hosted the first AI Safety Summit and passed the Safety of Rwanda Act, but led the Conservatives to their worst-ever defeat in July 2024. He remains MP for Richmond and Northallerton.

How to spot them

  • ▸First British Asian and first Hindu prime minister
  • ▸Chancellor behind furlough and 'Eat Out to Help Out'
  • ▸'Stop the boats' and the Rwanda plan
  • ▸Announced the 2024 election in the rain outside Number 10
  • ▸Winchester College, Oxford and Stanford; ex-Goldman Sachs

In office

Eat Out to Help Out (2020)

Covid-era scheme, as Chancellor, subsidising restaurant meals in August 2020

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ('furlough') (2020)

Paid a large share of the wages of workers kept on by employers during lockdowns

The Windsor Framework (2023)

Deal with the EU revising the Northern Ireland Protocol

The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park (2023)

The first global summit on AI safety, producing the Bletchley Declaration

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024)

Legislation to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, part of his pledge to 'stop the boats'

Calling the 2024 general election in the rain (2024)

His rain-soaked Downing Street announcement was drowned out by protesters playing 'Things Can Only Get Better'

Key ideas

  • Five priorities of 2023, including halving inflation
  • Cancelled the northern leg of HS2 in 2023
  • Brought David Cameron back into government as Foreign Secretary in 2023

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Southampton in 1980 to parents of Indian heritage who came from East Africa
  • •Head boy at Winchester College; studied PPE at Lincoln College, Oxford, and took an MBA at Stanford as a Fulbright scholar
  • •Married to Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy
  • •The first prime minister appointed by Charles III, on 25 October 2022
  • •Aged 42, the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool
  • •The Conservatives won just 121 seats in 2024, their lowest total ever
  • •MP for Richmond (Yorks), now Richmond and Northallerton, since 2015; since leaving office he has taken advisory roles with firms including Goldman Sachs and Microsoft

Drill it — 8 cards

1 / 8new card

Sources