Rishi Sunak UK’s new Prime Minister, winning Tory party leadership race over Penny Mordaunt
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Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has won the Conservative Party leadership race and is now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Sunak becomes the first non-white British Prime Minister in the history of the role, winning his campaign after losing the previous leadership race to Liz Truss.
The announcement was made this afternoon, after Penny Mordaunt dropped out of the race, leaving Rishi Sunak the sole candidate for the role. Sunak was viewed as the favourite for the position after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson pulled out of the race Sunday evening.
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Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, confirmed that they have receieved one candidate and therefore Rishi Sunak wil be the leader of the Conservative Party and will address the parliamentary party at 2:15pm.
Sunak will now be looking at a cabinet reshuffle as he replaces Liz Truss, the shortest reigning Prime Minister in British history. With names such as Pritti Patel and Kwasi Kwarteng both having shown their support to Suank in the previous campaign, could they now be reinstated on the Tory front bench?
There will also be questions around Boris Johnson also; having brought Sunak in as Chancellor despite only being an MP since 2015, the new Prime Minister’s resignation during Johnson’s reign was seen as the start of a domino effect leading to Johnson resigning from power. However could the public see Johnson return to a position such as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, a position currently held by Truss supporter James Cleverly?
Penny Mordaunt’s concession statement
Our party is our membership. Whether we are elected representatives, activities, fundraisers or supporters. We all have a stake in who our leader is.
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These are unprecendented times. Despite the compressed timetable for the leadership contest it is clear that collegues feel we need certaintly today. They have taken this decision in good faith for the good of the country.
Members should know that this proposition has been fairly and thoroughly tested by the agreed 1922 process.
As a result, we have now chosen our net Prime Minister. This decision is a historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support.
I am proud of the campaign we ran and grateful to all those, across all sides of our party, who have me their backing.
We all owe it to the country, to each other and Rishi to united and work together for the good of the nation. There is much work to be done.
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