Tory leadership candidate is praised as an earnest workaholic, but critics say politically he has a glass jaw and is naive
says in his soft-voiced campaign launch video, highlighting his status as the grandson of hard-grafting Indian immigrants.
“We all burst out laughing,” said Sanjay Chandarana, the president of the Vedic Society temple. “I don’t remember what [Sunak] said particularly but obviously there was a smile on his face.”48 hours later, helping to start a dramatic chain of events that forced Boris Johnson from Downing Street. “You can see the success of it. You get an education, you get a good job, you have respect, you go up in your status, and things become easier,” his mother, Usha, a pharmacist, told a BBC documentary in 2001.
His former tutor professes to have been “very surprised” when Sunak popped up years later on Newsnight – and “rather shocked” that he was there to speak for Boris Johnson, having shown few political leanings in his student days. As well as finding a fabulously wealthy spouse, Sunak picked up key aspects of his political philosophy during his time in California.
“A farmer would be good, or a military man, some of them chuntered on the way in. We need a local candidate, said others, or, obviously they have to come from Yorkshire, that’s a given.” But it was Sunak, with his combination of private school polish and the big ambitions he picked up in Stanford, who clinched the nomination.Hague then recalls him working tirelessly to hold the seat for the Tories.
In his maiden speech Sunak professed his belief in “a compassionate Britain, that provides opportunity and values freedom”. “It is a bit of a problem,” they said. “I have never known a minister in my life to work until 2am.” Another person who has seen how Sunak operates said it was “essentially like working for a banker”.
Sunak sits on the Tory frontbench during his time as chief secretary to the Treasury in October 2019.He arrived in post at an extraordinary moment, as the gravity of the Covid pandemic slowly began to dawn on Downing Street. Within weeks, Johnson was urging the public to stay in their homes, and Sunak was announcing the multibillion-pound furlough scheme.
“The Boris world was quite a weird one, and learning to navigate that,” said the official. “I remember when he first really understood that what Boris said and what Boris did weren’t really related. I think he was frustrated, he thought it was not how business should be done.” Harper rejects the characterisation of Sunak as slow to react to a crisis, saying: “I don’t think that’s fair: it’s been a rapidly changing situation.”
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