Rishi Sunak’s family, childhood, religion and more: The UK’s first non-white PM

The GP’s son from Southampton, whose Indian parents immigrated to Britain, retreated to the back benches last month after being swept aside by Liz Truss in the battle to replace Boris Johnson.

But after her chaotic premiership ended in ignominy after just 44 days the Richmond MP was today made Tory leader on Diwali, one of the religion’s major festivals.

He will now visit the King to be appointed as the UK’s first non-white and Hindu leader. The UK’s first – and only other – minority prime minister was Benjamin Disraeli, who was Jewish, in 1874.

Mr Sunak, 42, took over after challenger Penny Mordaunt pulled out of the leadership race with two minutes to go. She conceded at 1.58pm after failing to get 100 backers for her bid.

It caps a political journey that began seven years ago when he replaced William Hague in his Yorkshire seat at the 2015 election.

Mr Sunak only got his first ministerial job four years ago but became Chancellor of the Exchequer aged 39 in 2020.

He will become the youngest PM in the modern era to enter No 10, at the age of 42 – younger even than David Cameron in 2010 and Tony Blair in 1997.

The GP’s son from Southampton retreated to the backbenches last month after being swept aside by Liz Truss in the battle to replace Boris Johnson

But after her chaotic premiership ended in ignominy after just 44 days the Richmond MP has been appointed the UK’s first non-white and Hindu leader on Diwali, one of the religion’s major festivals

Mr Sunak with his wife Akshata Murthy and daughters Krishna and Anoushka. He has previously spoken about how his Asian identity matters to him, telling the BBC: ‘I’m a first generation immigrant. My parents emigrated here, so you’ve got this generation of people who are born here, their parents were not born here, and they’ve come to this country to make a life.’

After Oxford he studied at California’s Stanford University where he met his wife Akshata Murty

Mr Sunak previously shared pictures of his childhood in a three-minute long video when he launched his first Tory leadership campaign this summer

Mr Sunak grew up in Southampton and was head boy at Winchester College before going on to Oxford University

The new PM has regularly spoken of how his father, Yashvir, was an NHS GP in Southampton

He has also described how his mother, Usha, came to Britain from East Africa at the age of 15

His parents saved up to send him to the £42,000-per-year Winchester College, and he later went to Oxford, where he studied PPE.

Mr Sunak has previously spoken of how did the books at his mother’s pharmacy in Southampton while he was growing up.

After attending Oxford he studied at California’s Stanford University where he met his wife.

 Mr Sunak married Akshata Murty, an Indian tech billionaire’s daughter, and built a multi million-pound fortune that saw him dubbed the ‘Maharajah of the Dales’.

Her father, NR Narayana Murthy, is India’s sixth-wealthiest man thanks to his ownership of multinational business technology giant Infosys.

The couple married in her home city of Bangalore in 2009 in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests.

Thanks to his own banking fortune and that of his wife he is believed to be one of the richest members of Parliament, and owns a magnificent Georgian manor house in the small village of Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire.

Mr Sunak has praised his father-in-law’s favourite saying: ‘In God we trust — but everyone else needs to bring data to the table.’

After the couple returned to Britain, Mr Sunak worked for a London hedge fund before setting up his own business, Theleme Partners, in 2010, with an initial fund of $700million. He was based in the UK and the United States before entering politics and winning Richmond in 2015.

Mr Sunak ran for the leadership in the summer and won the backing of MPs including Michael Gove (pictured with Ms Murty)

The UK’s first – and only other – minority prime minister was Benjamin Disraeli, who was Jewish, in 1874

The couple married in her home city of Bangalore in 2009 in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests

Mr Sunak’s rise to the top took much of the country by surprise.

A junior local government minister under Theresa May, he was elevated to chief secretary to the Treasury by Boris Johnson, serving under Sajid Javid.

But in February 2020 he was handed the top job of chancellor when Mr Javid sensationally quit amid bitter infighting between No 10 and No 11 involving Dominic Cummings. He was told to sack his chief aides and walked out after refusing.

Mr Sunak was a relative unknown, but was quickly thrust into the limelight when Covid struck the country weeks later.

He oversaw a massive campaign of public spending, the largest ever known in peacetime, including the furlough scheme that prevented millions of people losing their jobs but took UK borrowing to eyewatering levels.

The end of his time as chancellor was as swift as his assent. After months of chaos under Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak followed Mr Javid out of the Cabinet, resigning over the behaviour of the prime minister.

Minutes after Mr Javid stepped down as health secretary he too walked out on the PM. Their decision sparked an exodus of ministers that forced Mr Johnson to finally call an end to his scandal-plagued premiership.

Mr Sunak was the clear favourite of Tory MPs during the summer leadership election. But he lost out after it became clear that Conservative Party members preferred Liz Truss.

His economic position during the campaign, that tackling soaring inflation was more important than the tax cuts promised by Ms Truss, went down badly.

It was a bad-tempered contest, with Mr Sunak lashing out at her ‘fairytale economics’ live on television. But in the end he appears to have been proved right, with her time in power lasting just weeks as the markets reacted badly to her attempts to stimulate growth with borrowing-funded tax cuts.

In one of the televised hustings Mr Sunak defended his record in No 11 against criticism that the UK had the highest tax burden in 70 years.

‘I don’t think the responsible thing to do right now is launch into some unfunded spree of borrowing and more debt, that will just make inflation worse, it will make the problem longer,’ he said.

Ms Truss pinned the blame on the Bank of England, saying ‘we have inflation because of our monetary policy, we haven’t been tough enough on the monetary supply, that’s the way that I would address that issue’.

But the former chancellor told her: ‘Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan, it’s a fairytale.’

Ms Truss responded: ‘I think it is wrong to put taxes up.’

Mr Sunak also faced anger from some Tory members who felt he was to blame for Mr Johnson quitting. But he also received support and defended himself, often robustly, in the face of critical audience questions.

Mr Sunak’s victory would come after questions about his and his wife’s tax affairs.

In April it was revealed he had held a US Green Card – which carries American residency and tax requirements – while in office.

But Lord Geidt, the adviser on ministerial standards, cleared Mr Sunak of wrongdoing after the chancellor referred himself for investigation.

There was also uproar over Ms Murty’s tax status and her shareholding in her father’s tech firm while living in a grace-and-favour apartment in Downing Street.

Ms Murty legally avoided a huge UK tax bill by paying £30,000 a year to register as being based in India.

This is the extraordinary web of homes and businesses with links to Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata, a heiress to a billion-dollar fortune

Rishi Sunak was hit by a political backlash over the news that his heiress wife Akshata Murty was domiciled in India for tax purposes

The India-born 42-year-old later said she would give up her right to pay only ‘international tax’ on her foreign fortune.

The move, designed to save Mr Sunak’s political career, is likely to cost Ms Murty millions of pounds a year in extra tax.

Mr Sunak insisted she hadn’t ‘done anything wrong’ while accusing his critics of ‘smearing her to get at him’.

In his May 2021 annual statement the independent adviser on ministers’ interests said he had ‘gone through the individual returns’ of members of the Cabinet, including their tax affairs and the interests of their spouses.

He went on to say that ‘any issues have been resolved to my satisfaction’, suggesting he was happy with Ms Murty’s tax status, her shareholding in Infosys and the Green Card.