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Saturday, 29 October 2022 13:55

Rishi Sunak elected Prime Minister of UK

Written by  Rahma
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Former Head of the United Kingdom’s Treasury, Rishi Sunak was elected Prime Minister of the UK after winning the election for the leadership of the conservative party. He faces a lot of tasks of stabilizing the party and the state at a time of political and economic upheaval.

Rishi Sunak becomes the third UK government leader this year, following the resignations of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss who only served for about 45 days. Sunak had been asked by King Charles III to immediately form a government.

Rishi Sunak's victory became a new history of government in England. He became the first British prime minister of South Asian descent, the first Hindu to hold the post of prime minister. He is also listed as the youngest to hold this position in more than 200 years. The record was previously held by William Pitt who took office at the age of 40 in 1812. Sunak is also the fastest MP to reach the post of Prime Minister in the modern era after only serving in the British Government for seven years. The previous record holder, David Cameron, managed to become Prime Minister in nine years.

The challenges that Sunak will face in the future are quite heavy. He must stabilize the divided Conservative Party which lags far behind the opposition in opinion polls. In addition, the great task is how to support the British economy, which was shaken after Truss' brief experiment in libertarian economics.

According to Jeremy Hunt, the Treasury Secretary Sunak had retained from the  previous Truss cabinet, his top priority is economic stability and restoring confidence that the UK is a country that can do it. Thereby, the British people hope the new government can explain how it plans to cover the budget shortfall of 40 billion pounds or US$46 billion dollars. Yet,  Rishi Sunak last Wednesday (26/10) postponed the announcement of a long-awaited plan to improve the country's public finances until November 17, about two and a half weeks later than originally planned. Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a televised broadcast that it would take more time to ensure the new plan to deal with  the country's latest economic forecasts.

Hopefully, the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the economic policies to be carried out will bring about a good recovery that can help Britain out of the economic difficulties currently faced.

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