Rishi Sunak was on October 24 elected the new UK Prime Minister after garnering majority support from his Conservative Party. This implies that King Charles III may appoint him in the post before taking office at 10 Downing Street.
As head of state, it is the King’s duty to appoint the prime minister who leads His Majesty’s Government.
The Royal Encyclopaedia states that the appointment of a prime minister is "one of the few remaining personal prerogatives of the sovereign”.
The monarch does not act on advice nor need to consult anyone before calling upon a politician to form a government.
But the overriding requirement is to appoint someone who can command the confidence of the House of Commons – which usually means the leader of the party with an overall majority of seats in the Commons.
During the Buckingham Palace audience, expected in the next few days, the monarch – as is his constitutional duty – will offer Sunak the opportunity to form a new government and become premier of the UK.
Sunak is a British politician who has emerged UK Prime Minister, to replace Liz Truss. Sunak has been a member of the Conservative Party for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
Sunak was born in Southampton on May 12, 1980, to Indian parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak who migrated from Kenya. His grandparents were born in then British India's Punjab Province. They migrated to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s with their children.
Sunak studied at Winchester College and read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2001. The 42-year-old also did his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar from Standford University in 2006
The Yorkshire MP married Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys founder NR Narayan Murthy, in 2009 and has two children with her.
He worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst between 2001 and 2004.
He has also worked for the hedge fund management firm The Children's Investment Fund Management and became a partner of the company in 2006. He joined Theleme Partners in 2010.
Sunak was also a director of Catamaran Ventures, an investment firm owned by his father-in-law.
He was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014. He was the head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit of the think tank Policy Exchange in the same year.
In 2015, he became MP from the constituency with a majority of 36.2 per cent votes.
From 2015-17, he was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.
Sunak was re-elected from his seat in the 2017 general elections. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government.
In 2019, he was appointed Chief Secretary to Treasury by Boris Johnson and also became a member of the Privy Council. He was re-elected in the 2019 general election.
Sunak, on July 5, 2022, resigned from his post along with minister Sajid Javid, expressing a lack of confidence in Johnson's leadership.
Later that week, Sunak announced his prime ministerial bid, and topped the first two rounds of the race within the Conservative party.
Rishi Sunak reached a symbolic milestone in his bid to replace Liz Truss as British prime minister Monday morning: winning the public support of 178 Conservative MPs — half of the parliamentary party
His campaign benefited from a rush of new endorsements since Boris Johnson withdrew from the race Sunday evening, prompting more lawmakers to switch their allegiance from him to Sunak than to Mordaunt.