Rishi Sunak will become the 57th British Prime Minister after he was declared the next Conservative Party leader Monday.
Sunak won the backing of an absolute majority of serving MPs and was the sole candidate to reach the required threshold of 100 supporters in the party leadership contest.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was expected to enter a leadership race with Penny Mordaunt but Ms Mordaunt failed to reach the required threshold by the deadline and withdrew from the race on Monday afternoon.
Sunak had been the favourite to replace Liz Truss since her resignation last Thursday and this was crystallised when Boris Johnson declared he would not run on Sunday, despite returning from a holiday in the Caribbean in an attempt to drum up support for a second stint in No 10.
Sunak (42) will be the youngest Prime Minister to serve in the past 200 years, younger than both David Cameron and Tony Blair, who were both 43 when appointed as PM.
He will also be the first PM of Asian descent – both of Sunak’s parents are of Punjabi ethnicity and emigrated to the UK in the 1960s.
Sunak, a Southampton native and graduate of Stanford in the US, had been seen as a divisive figure within the party following his perceived betrayal of Boris Johnson earlier this year.
But on Saturday night, old grievances were apparently forgotten when Boris Johnson met with Sunak in an attempt to reach a compromise on a joint ticket.
No agreement was reached, and Johnson formally declared he would not enter a leadership race on Sunday morning – paving the way for Sunak to become Prime Minister.
