UK appoints its first non-white prime minister

Ishtiaq Ahmed

London: Rishi Sunak becomes the first Black & Asian Prime Minister of the UK. This indeed is an accomplishment of a historic proportion. It demonstrates how far the Black & Asian communities have moved on the British democracy within a time span of last 70 plus years.

Sunak is a practicing Hindu of India born. He is the youngest prime minister in this week of Deewali celebrations.

Rishi Sunak becomes the leader of the Conservative Party and the first Black & Asian Prime Minister of UK after Boris Johnson withdraw from the contest yesterday and Penny Mordaunt withdraw literally minutes from the close of nominations after failing to achieve 100 required nominees to progress to the ballot by conservatives party membership .

This historical change has come about against the background of 6 prime ministers of the country in the last as many years and the third prime minister this year.

Yes, we are talking about UK, the world’s longest established and the most stable democracy AND not about some newly evolving democracy in another distant part of the world.

Sir Keir Starmar, the Labour Party leader described these developments as ‘revolving doors’.

Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor under the Boris Johnson’s premiership, in the last contest for premiership, lost out in the conservative membership vote to Liz Truss, the outgoing Prime Minister after 44 days having pushed to resign.

Sunak faces huge challenges ahead. He is taking over the leadership of a much divided party. Uniting it will be difficult.

He has no mandate of the broad conservative membership. Economically, the country is in huge economic turmoil with heavy debts, rising energy bills for households, rising costs of essentials, rents and mortgages and Ukraine war.

The opposition would be asserting that he has no electoral mandate. After the third prime minister, the country needs to move to the General Election. The Conservative Party would resist going to the Election. They would insist that they have a strong majority in the commons and have two years of government left.