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Rishi Sunak unleashed an intense election campaign this weekend in his mission to win the votes of the Conservative Party to be elected their leader, and on Saturday vowed to put the UK in crisis if elected prime minister.
The 42-year-old former chancellor said in an interview with The Times that business as usual would not work in the face of the serious economic challenges facing the country.
Having been in government, I think the system just doesn’t work as it should. And the challenges I’m talking about, they’re not abstract, they’re not things that come a long way down the track, he told the newspaper.
They are challenges that stare us in the face and the usual mentality will not prevent us from dealing with them. So from the first day in office I will put us in a crisis position, he said.
Ahead of a speech in Grantham, the East Anglican hometown of 1980s prime minister Margaret Thatcher – the former Tory leader, both Sunak and opponent Liz Truss hold themselves up as role models to woo traditional voters – The Southampton-born former Indian-born banker-turned-politician has highlighted how his deeply conservative values have been shaped by his family’s pharmacy business.
I was brought up in a home with conservative values at the kitchen table, my mother ran a small business, Margaret Thatcher talked about the family budget. We all care about what we will leave to our children and grandchildren. Sound money is the most conservative of conservative values. If we don’t stand for that, I don’t know what the point of the Conservative Party is, he said.
As well as tackling inflation as a national emergency, Sunak said his focus would also be on delivering better value for money for the taxpayer-funded NHS – an issue he takes personally with grandparents who have just left an NHS hospital.
It’s personal to all of us, the lag problem. He literally just got out and is very sick, Sunak shared.
We have been extremely worried as a family about everything the past few weeks, he is my last remaining grandparent. It would be unacceptable for millions upon millions of people to wait too long for the treatment they deserve, he said.
The MP for Richmond in Yorkshire admitted missing his family on the campaign trail and using video calls to keep in touch.
Family is at the core of who I am. I miss them so much, they are in Yorkshire and I am here. We are on video every day. But it’s not the same, but they’re used to it, said Sunak, who is married to Akshatha Murthy, the daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy.
As Prime Minister, you can expect me to be someone who is incredibly supportive of families. Families are amazing, families do something that no government can hope to replicate. I wouldn’t be here without the love and support, the sacrifice, the kindness of my family in all its different ways. That’s why I think families are really special. As prime minister I would absolutely protect families, he said.
As someone who took the oath of allegiance upon his election as Member of Parliament to the House of Commons on the Bhagavad Gita, the former cabinet minister said his Hindu faith gave him strength and recalled one of his proudest moments when, as Britain’s first Indian-origin Chancellor he lit Diwai diyaas in front of No. 11 Downing Street.
It [faith] it gives me strength, it gives me purpose. It’s part of who I am. It was one of my proudest moments to be able to do that on the steps of Downing Street. It was one of my proudest moments in the work I’ve had in the last two years. And it meant a lot to a lot of people, and it’s an amazing thing for our country, he said.
Sunak will go head-to-head with Foreign Secretary Truss in the race to win over Tory members who are eligible to vote for their new party leader in postal ballots to be mailed out early next month.
In contrast to his winning streak as the favorite when his party’s MPs chose the two finalists in internal votes this month, Sunak is now an outsider in the race to replace Boris Johnson as polls show a comfortable lead for his opponent. Truss’ promise to cut taxes from day one is believed to be just one factor behind this popularity.
There are also significant numbers among the estimated 180,000 Tory voters who remain fiercely loyal to Johnson and see Sunak as the minister responsible for his hasty exit after the former cabinet minister’s resignation set the current events in motion for the ruling party.
(Only the title and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated by a syndicated feed.)
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