Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Today, Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister of Great Britain. Sunak is the third prime minister in seven weeks.
Rishi Sunak: Some mistakes were made, not borne of ill will or bad intentions, quite the opposite, in fact, but mistakes nonetheless. I have been elected as leader of my party and your prime minister in part to fix them.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As a Brit of Indian descent and as a Hindu, Rishi Sunak will be the first prime minister of color to serve in the role. Joining me now from London is Yasmeen Serhan, staff writer on Foreign Affairs for Time Magazine. Yasmeen, welcome back to The Takeaway.
Yasmeen Serhan: Thanks for having me back.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Just who is this new prime minister? I feel like I've been asking that question a lot lately. Tell us how he rose to this position within the Conservative Party.
Yasmeen Serhan: Certainly. Rishi Sunak may be a relatively new face on the international scene, but he's not unknown to Brits. Prior to becoming Prime Minister only moments ago, he was perhaps best known as being the chancellor, or finance minister as it's called here, during the pandemic. He oversaw a lot of the British government's programs to help keep businesses and people afloat during that crisis.
Prior to that, he was one of the original supporters of Brexit. This is a man who sometimes affectionately known as Dishy Rishi during his period in the Johnson government. He was also, it's worth noting, involved in a number of scandals towards the end of that government. Like Boris Johnson, he was fined for attending Johnson's birthday party in violation of pandemic restrictions.
He's also known as being one of the richest lawmakers and now prime ministers in the country. It's rumored that his net worth of I think more than 700 million tops that of the net worth of those currently residing in Buckingham Palace. He's certainly a really interesting figure and is now being seen in the country as hopefully a steady pair of hands not only for the British economy but for the country at large.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm going to take a listen to someone who called in to the LBC radio in London. This is a rank-and-file member of the Conservative Party.
Party Member: Rishi's not going to win it. Rishi's not even British. In most people's opinion, he doesn't love England like Boris does.
Yasmeen Serhan: Wow.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I did that-- so in a certain way wow is all you can really say but help us to understand that presumably that's not because of his wealth.
Yasmeen Serhan: Yes. That comment I would say presumably that's, hopefully, not representative of the way that English but also more broadly British people feel about having, as you said, the first prime minister of color in this country. In fact in the leadership contest, not just the one that concluded very swiftly over the last few days but even the previous one between Sunak and Liz Truss, his predecessor. The fact that Sunak was going to be such a historic-- or could have been, at that point, a historic prime minister really didn't feature in the contest.
You could perhaps attribute that to the fact that this is a country where multiculturalism and diversity is perhaps so normalized, that this was just not really seen as a big deal. It also could be explained by the fact that there are just so many obstacles and so many challenges and so many scandals that people just simply didn't have enough time to even consider the fact that this was a historic appointment.
I think that comment that you just played is indicative of the fact that, unfortunately, this is a challenge that the country-- that you're going to get blowback like that, unfortunately, in response to stuff like this. I don't think it should at all diminish the fact that this is an incredibly historic and proud moment for a lot of Britons, especially those of Indian heritage like the prime minister.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to take a listen to something else that Sunak said during his announcement.
Rishi Sunak: I want to pay tribute to my predecessor Liz Truss. She was not wrong to want to improve growth in this country. It is a noble aim.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Yasmeen, does this mean that we can expect to see very similar policies but may be done as you pointed out with a more steady hand or more adept political capacity?
Yasmeen Serhan: Absolutely not. I think the prime minister was simply being polite and hopefully trying to be a bit gracious. In fact, he would be forgiven if he was basically saying I told you so to everyone, because he did spend much of the leadership contest against Liz Truss warning that exactly what did happen which was economic chaos would happen if her economic plans of tax cuts for the wealthiest Britons whilst increasing spending were to happen.
In fact, all of his predictions came true. He called it a fairy tale. I think now that is a tone of a prime minister who wants to bring his deeply divided party back together and to try to be a bit kind to his predecessor who, let's face it, made a lot of mistakes and even in her own resignation, didn't really seem to acknowledge that she was wrong in her solutions in her economic plans. I think we're certainly going to see a different approach. Namely, we're not going to see the tax cuts that Liz Truss tried to bring in, especially for, as I said, Briton's wealthiest.
I think what we are going to see is potentially some tax increases and definitely a lot of belt-tightening to try to balance the government's books. That is something that I think is potentially going to hit ordinary Britons in particular very hard.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, clearly, this decision that makes Sunak the prime minister is essentially an internal policy choice, not a general election. Would this outcome have been different, perhaps, particularly, at these intersections of this historic identity for the prime minister? Would that have been different, in your opinion, if this had been a general election?
Yasmeen Serhan: I think the conservatives would no longer be in power if we had a general election. The polls indicate that the party is polling at its lowest level in British polling history. It's difficult to overstate, I think, just how poorly things look for the Conservatives, and that's the reason we're probably not going to see a general election anytime soon. This is a parliamentary democracy.
Everything that's taken place the selection of Rishi Sunak by his own Conservative colleagues is part of how this system works. There is going to be a lot of pressure on him to call for a general election principally because the majority of British people, polls are telling us, think that three prime ministers in nearly as many months maybe it's time that we be allowed to make the decision of who leads our country next.
Rishi Sunak, in his statement outside Downing Street, he pledged to continue with the Conservative's 2019 manifesto from that election. That manifesto was written in a very different world with very different economic circumstances. I think it's also going to be very difficult for him to hold that pledge whilst making the very difficult decisions as he put it when it comes to balancing this country's budget.
A general election is what many people want. I suspect it's not something we're going to get at least not until early January 2025 at the absolute latest.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Yasmeen Serhan is Foreign Affairs staff writer for Time Magazine in London. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Yasmeen Serhan: Thank you for having me.
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