Saturday, July 16, 2022

Rishi Sunak: UK's Obama



Rishi Sunak born 12 May 1980 .... is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022, having previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015. ......... Born in Southampton to Indian parents who migrated from East Africa, Sunak was educated at Winchester College. He subsequently read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later gained an MBA from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar. While studying at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys. Sunak and Murthy are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022. After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms The Children's Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners. .......... His father Yashvir was born and raised in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (present-day Kenya), while his mother Usha was born in Tanganyika (which later became part of Tanzania). .......... His grandparents were born in Punjab Province, British India, and migrated from East Africa with their children to the UK in the 1960s. ......... Sunak attended Stroud School, a preparatory school in Romsey, Hampshire, and Winchester College, a boys' independent boarding school, where he was head boy and the editor of the school paper. ........ He waited tables at a curry house in Southampton during his summer holidays ......... Sunak worked as an analyst for the investment bank Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004. He then worked for the hedge fund management firm The Children's Investment Fund Management, becoming a partner in September 2006.[18] He left in November 2009[19] in order to join former colleagues at a new hedge fund firm, Theleme Partners, which launched in October 2010 with $700 million under management. He was also a director of the investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by his father-in-law, Indian businessman N. R. Narayana Murthy. ........... Sunak was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014. The seat had previously been held by William Hague, a former leader of the party, Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, who chose to stand down at the following general election. The seat is one of the safest Conservative seats in the United Kingdom and has been held by the party for over 100 years. ........... He was elected as MP for the constituency at the 2015 general election with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%). .......... Sunak was re-elected at the 2017 general election, with an increased majority of 23,108 (40.5%). ........... Sunak was re-elected in the 2019 general election with an increased majority of 27,210 (47.2%). .......... During the election campaign, Sunak represented the Conservatives in both the BBC's and ITV's seven-way election debates. ............ Sunak was fined alongside Johnson for attending a party .......... In an Ipsos MORI poll in September 2020, Sunak had the highest satisfaction score of any British Chancellor since Labour's Denis Healey in April 1978. ........ On 26 September, Sunak was said to have opposed a second lockdown with the threat of his resignation, due to what he saw as the dire economic consequences it would have and the responsibility he would have to suffer for that. ......... In November 2020, Sunak was reported by The Guardian to have not declared a significant amount of his wife and family's financial interests on the register of ministers' interests, including a combined £1.7 billion shareholding in the Indian company Infosys. .............. In June 2021, at the G7 summit hosted by Sunak at Lancaster House in London, a tax reform agreement was signed, which in principle, sought to establish a global minimum tax on multinationals and online technology companies. .......... As Chancellor, Sunak privately lobbied to impose a green levy, which would have led to higher petrol and diesel prices, to help pay for the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 .......... The proposed Fossil Fuels Emissions Trading Scheme, drawn up by the Treasury, sought to levy pollution from road transportation, as well as shipping, building heating and diesel trains, which together make up more than 40% of UK carbon emissions. The proposal was ultimately rejected by Boris Johnson, who instructed officials that he did not want to increase costs for consumers ........... He said that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic had been disrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He cut fuel duty, removed VAT on energy saving equipment (such as solar panels and insulation) and reduced national insurance payments for small businesses and while continuing with a planned national insurance rise in April he promised to align the primary threshold with the basic personal income allowance as of July. ............ As Chancellor, Sunak was pushing ahead with a new law that would pave the way for stablecoins to be used for everyday payments, despite fears from the Bank of England about the financial stability of the technology. In April 2022, Sunak ordered the Royal Mint to create a UK government-backed non-fungible token (NFT) to be issued by summer 2022. .............. Sunak's wife Akshata Murty has[when?] non-domiciled status, which means she does not[when?] have to pay tax on income earned abroad while living in the UK. She pays[when?] around £30,000 to secure the status, which allows her to avoid paying an estimated £20 million in UK taxes ......... Following media controversy, Murty announced on 8 April that she would pay UK taxes on her global income, adding in a statement that she didn't want the issue "to be a distraction for my husband". ......... Sunak had continued to hold the U.S. permanent resident card he had acquired in the 2000s until 2021, including for 18 months after he was Chancellor, which required filing U.S. tax returns ........... Conservative politicians who had supported Johnson criticised Sunak as "leading the charge in bringing down the prime minister", and Jacob Rees-Mogg called him a "high tax chancellor" ........ The domain readyforrishi.com was first registered with GoDaddy on 23 December 2021, while ready4rishi.com was registered on 6 July 2022, two days after Sunak resigned as Chancellor. ......... In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was very popular by the standards of British politics, being described by one analyst as having

"better ratings than any politician since the heydays of Tony Blair"

. ......... During this time, he was widely seen as the favourite to become the next Prime Minister and leader of Conservative Party. Sunak developed something of a cult media following with jokes and gossip about him being sexually attractive becoming widespread on social media and in magazines. .......... Sunak married Akshata Murty, the daughter of the Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, in August 2009. Murty owns a 0.91% stake in Infosys, which is valued at about $900m (£690m), as of April 2022, making her one of the wealthiest women in Britain. Infosys continued to operate in Russia following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which led to criticism of Sunak and his family, but in April Infosys announced it was closing its Russian office. Murty also owns shares in two of Jamie Oliver's restaurant businesses, Wendy's in India, Koro Kids and Digme Fitness. ............. Sunak and Murty met while studying at Stanford University; they have two daughters. Murty is a director of her father's investment firm, Catamaran Ventures. They live at Kirby Sigston Manor in the village of Kirby Sigston, near to Northallerton, North Yorkshire. They also own a mews house in Kensington in central London, a flat on the Old Brompton Road, London, and a penthouse apartment in Santa Monica, California. ............. Sunak is a Hindu, and has taken his oath at the House of Commons on the Bhagavad Gita. He is a teetotaller. ........ Sunak is close friends with The Spectator's political editor James Forsyth, whom he has known since their schooldays. Sunak was the best man at Forsyth's wedding to the journalist Allegra Stratton, and they are godparents to each other's children........... In the Sunday Times Rich List 2022 ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK, Sunak and Murty were placed 222nd, with an estimated combined wealth of £730 million, making him the "first frontline politician to join the rich list".



Rivals Vying to Replace Johnson Are Diverse in Background, Not in Plans The Conservatives running to be Britain’s prime minister include women and people of non-European descent, but they sound a lot alike: They like Brexit and want to cut taxes. ......... Four are women. Six have recent forebears hailing from far beyond Europe — India, Iraq, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria and Pakistan. Of the three white men, one is married to a Chinese woman while another holds a French passport. ........... On paper, the nearly dozen candidates vying to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader and prime minister are a kaleidoscopic tribute to Britain’s rich diversity. In terms of policy proposals, however, the mosaic they create is resolutely monochromatic. ......... Many would continue to put illegal migrants on planes to Rwanda. ........ are competing to replace a prime minister who was criticized for lurching wildly from crisis to crisis, running a government that is, by all accounts, drifting in the face of grave economic stress and deepening tensions with Brussels. ........... What they should be talking about, Professor Portes said, is how Britain is going to avert a full-blown crisis in its schools and hospitals in a few months, when surging inflation and budget cuts will hit teachers and nurses, prompting some to quit their jobs and others to strike. Tax cuts will not solve the cost-of-living squeeze, he said, but they will stoke inflation and deplete Britain’s already shaky public finances. ........... the support of 20 lawmakers needed to run in that first contest, and ending next week with a shortlist of two ........... In theory, a two-person race will sharpen the debate and surface more difficult issues. .......... The party’s rank-and-file membership, which is largely made up of activists, also tends to be more right-wing than average voters ............. the early front-runner, Rishi Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor of the Exchequer last week helped set in motion the events that brought down Mr. Johnson. ........... The candidates are, by and large, coalescing around Mr. Johnson’s plan to tear up a deal he made with the European Union on trade rules for Northern Ireland. The move led Brussels to accuse Britain of violating international law and has sparked fears of a trade war. .......... There is growing evidence that Brexit has imposed an extra burden on the British economy. But Britain’s sharp split from the European Union is now a matter of political orthodoxy. Expressing doubts about it, Professor Ford said, was “like making a case for atheism at St. Peter’s.” .......... The least well-known contender, Rehman Chishti, put out a video that appeared to have been recorded outside by phone, with wind noise in the background. ............ “Perhaps the most remarkable fact about it is that people don’t see it as remarkable,” Professor Ford said. It showed, he said, “how far the party has come on that in really a quite short period of time.” .

Sunak Takes the Lead in the Voting to Replace U.K. Prime Minister The former chancellor of the Exchequer led a pack of candidates after the first round, while an obscure trade minister surprised in second place. ........ Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, stayed at the front of the pack of candidates vying to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain after the first round of the Conservative Party’s leadership contest on Tuesday. .......... But Penny Mordaunt, a relatively little-known junior trade minister, finished a strong second in the vote among Conservative lawmakers. And she has opened a commanding lead among the party’s rank-and-file members, according to a new poll, which suggested she could soon supplant Mr. Sunak as the favorite. .......... They will spend a hectic summer wooing the party’s membership — a larger, though still limited group — which will elect Mr. Johnson’s replacement in early September. ......... While Mr. Sunak was expected to be the front-runner, and won a respectable 88 votes, Ms. Mordaunt’s 67 votes placed her within striking distance of him. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, emerged as the third top-tier candidate, with 50 votes. .......... In a poll conducted by the market research firm YouGov, Ms. Mordaunt, a paratrooper’s daughter who serves in the Royal Naval Reserve, holds a wide lead among members over Mr. Sunak, Ms. Truss and all other candidates. ....... To complicate the picture further, Mr. Johnson suggested that the process of replacing him could move more quickly if the second-ranked candidate bowed out after the initial rounds and the leader was elected by acclamation. ......... In a sign that his rivals are already beginning to turn the page on him, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, devoted most of his questions to pressing Mr. Johnson for his views on people who have non-domicile tax status in Britain. That status is claimed by the wife of Mr. Sunak, Akshata Murty, whose father is the Indian technology billionaire Narayana Murthy. Mr. Starmer signaled that Labour would make the wealth of Mr. Sunak and his wife the centerpiece of its attack on him if he emerges as the next Tory leader. ........... Mr. Johnson has declined to endorse any of the candidates, saying that to do so might hurt their chances. But in a lively exchange with Mr. Starmer, he predicted that any one of them would be able to “wipe the floor” with the Labour leader, whom he lampooned as “Captain Crash-a-Roony Snooze Fest.” .



Who is Rishi Sunak? Mr. Sunak had a swift rise from his first election to Parliament in 2015. In February 2020, when he was 39 years old, Mr. Johnson appointed him chancellor, the government’s chief financial officer and often second in power only to the prime minister. ......... As the coronavirus crisis gripped the country, Mr. Sunak, a former hedge fund manager, rolled out a series of aid packages for businesses and individuals that were widely applauded. Those moves, and his air of competence, quickly made him a popular face of the government response. ......... Mr. Sunak, the eldest son of Indian immigrants, attended the elite Winchester College boarding school and Oxford. He earned his M.B.A. at Stanford and has been held up as an example of a multiethnic and more modern Britain. ............ First came the revelation that his wealthy wife had claimed a tax status that allowed her to avoid paying taxes on some of her income. Then it was revealed that Mr. Sunak continued to hold a green card, allowing him to live and work in the United States for months after he became chancellor. .

Ex-Goddess Works to Reform 700-Year Tradition. Her M.B.A. Helps. As a child, Chanira Bajracharya was worshiped in Nepal, but still made time to study. She is now encouraging the girl goddesses who’ve followed her to do the same. .

Rishi Sunak plugs for honesty in first UK PM race debate Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, among the top three candidates, also wants to cut some taxes, with with Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat slightly more measured in laying out their plans over the dominant issue of the race........

“You have to be honest. Borrowing your way out of inflation isn't a plan, it's a fairytale,” Sunak told Truss, as the Channel 4 debate on Friday night got heated and he rubbished her proposals and warned against an "unfunded spree" of tax cuts.

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