Who’s Rishi Sunak, the first-round winner of the UK’s conservative prime minister vote?

Who’s Rishi Sunak, the first-round winner of the UK’s conservative prime minister vote?
FILE PHOTO: Former British Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Rishi Sunak speaks to the media at an event to launch his campaign to be the next Conservative leader and Prime Minister, in London, Britain, July 12, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

After Boris Johnson announced his resignation, it became the job of the UK’s conservative party to find and vote on his replacement since they hold the majority in Parliament. The first round of those leadership votes was on Wednesday, and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak won that round with 88 votes, moving him and five other candidates to the next round.

Sunak got his education first at Oxford University and then was a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University in California, where he got his MBA. After that, he went on to work in business and finance, having worked for Goldman Sachs for a time. He won his parliamentary seat for Richmond in 2015, and it’s one of the safest conservative seats in the UK.

Sunak was actually in the Johnson administration as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which meant that he was in charge of the government treasury. But he also was one of the notable resignations earlier this month, which led to a string of other resignations, including Johnson’s.

Before that, he was in Theresa May’s government as the undersecretary of state for local government. Sunak is also extraordinarily rich, with the Sunday Times having listed him and his wife (Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy) on their Rich List of the UK’s wealthiest 250 people, being worth around £730million (US$870 million).