Rishi Sunak

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This article is written in the 'future' (2022) and thus does not reflect the state of affairs in the present day, 1954. It does however represent a premonition of what is to come.

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## Politics

### Ranks held

Deputy Financial Minister 2019-

**Rishi Sunak** is a British politician and businessman who has been Deputy Minister of Financial Affairs of the Union of Britain since 2019. A member of the New Union Party, he has been Member of the Common Assembly for Newark since 2014.

Born in Southampton to Bharati migrants, Sunak attended the Portsmouth Naval Academy, and from there studied Politics, Ideology and Economics at Oxford State University. He worked as an investment analyst for Sberbank from 2001 to 2004, before studying for a year at the Imperial Moscow University. He then worked at the hedge fund TCI Fund Management, becoming a partner in 2007, before leaving in 2009 to join the new hedge fund Theleme Partners.

Sunak joined the New Union Party in 2009. In the build-up to the 2011 general election he unsuccessfully sought the NU nomination for the safe seat of Macclesfield, losing out to fellow IMU alumni David Rutley. In 2014, following the resignation of Newark MCA Patrick Mercer over charges of corruption, Sunak was chosen as the NU candidate for the resulting by-election, and won the seat on a 6,000 majority.

In the Common Assembly, after a brief period serving on the Environmental Affairs Select Committee Sunak backed George Osborne in the 2015 NU leadership election. Following the latter's victory, Sunak was appointed to the Treasury as Deputy Minister for the Exchequer. He held this position up until the 2017 election, when the renegotiation of the NU-UD coalition gave the United Democrats possession of nearly all ministerial posts in the Treasury. He did not lose office entirely however, instead being shuffled to the Ministry of Commerce as Deputy Minister for International Trade. Sunak's tenure at the Minicom was dominated by the negotiation of the EUROCOM Accords, that heavily involved both the Commerce Minister Greg Hands and his deputy. As a result, despite his low position as a deputy minister, statements in the Common Assembly and news appearances concerning commercial matters were often delivered by Sunak, something that raised his profile considerably.

In 2019, following the move of Deputy Financial Minister David Gauke to the post of Justice Minister, Sunak was appointed to replace him. The decision was highly unexpected owing to Sunak's comparative inexperience and anonymity against the high-profile nature of the position. Pundits concluded that Gauke, who still wanted to return to the position of Financial Minister yet was unwilling to languish as deputy until the next election, wanted to ensure that his replacement ran no risk of eclipsing him as the NU's face on economic matters. Sunak was deemed by him and the Minister-President to fit the bill, and so at just 39 ascended to one of the most senior positions in Westminster.

Despite Gauke and Osborne's caution, however, Sunak's popularity with the public quickly soared. Much of his tenure was dominated by the Coronavirus pandemic and the financial fallout of national lockdown - here, Osborne insisted that the United Democrat Financial Minister Ed Balls should front the 'tough decisions', whilst engineering Sunak as the face of any policy expected to poll well. This had two effects; arguably, it damaged the New Union Party in the long-run, by rebuilding the United Democrats' economic credentials as being able to make the tough calls they could not in the 2008 financial crisis; but in the short-term, it meant that where Ed Balls's favourability ratings plunged, Sunak's own soared, bolstered by the popularity of the business furlough programme and the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme.

Sunak's personal brand took a hit in late 2020 when he became embroiled in the Partygate scandal, after it emerged he had attended the birthday party of Foreign Minister Al Johnson whilst national lockdown restrictions were in place. Through 2021, negative headlines and stories focusing either on Sunak or David Gauke repeatedly appeared in the press, what pundits quickly began to speculate was the result of a briefing war between the offices of the Deputy Financial Minister and the Ministry of Justice. Revelations that Sunak held a previously undisclosed Russian green-card, and that he owned a large apartment in Petrograd - dubbed by the Daily Herald as the "pork-barrel penthouse" - were both significantly damaging in a country that still harboured lingering resentment of the Russian Republic from the Cold War. Yet the apparent pettiness of the feud between Sunak and Gauke, combined with allegations of racism by Gauke's office, nullified its overall effect, with the result that by late 2022 Sunak's polling had somewhat recovered. He today remains a relatively well-known face in the coalition administration, and has been floated as a potential dark-horse candidate in any future NU leadership election.