RISHI SUNAK “loves being an MP” and has no intention of flying to California to begin a new life in America, as his enemies alleged during the general election campaign last year.
And, unlike Boris Johnson, he is not striving to be prime minister again, even though he is still only 44.
These are some of the revelations the former prime minister made during a two hour chat with Nick Robinson on the BBC journalist’s Political Thinking podcast.
Sunak, billed as the youngest British prime minister in 200 years, said he could now speak with “a sense of perspective” eight months on from leading the Conservative party to its worst election defeat.
He admitted he might have become prime minister too early in his political career, but argued that he did the right thing in stepping forward to provide leadership when Liz Truss stepped down after her disastrous budget.
Sunak was keen to set the record straight on his legacy, especially as the Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves has claimed the Tories left her with an unforeseen £22 billion “black hole”.
He pointed out: “When I took over (as prime minister in October 2022), remember that inflation was running at 11 per cent. Everything that people were buying was just going up and up and up.
“By the time I left, we hadn’t just halved it. It was back to where it was meant to be – on target. I think that was a milestone and that matters because it eases the pressure on people’s finances.”
Also, Britain’s was the fastest growing economy in the G7, he said.
When Robinson suggested Sunak that hadn’t lost the appetite for politics and might quite “fancy” getting the prime minister’s job back, he vigorously disagreed: “That’s not where my head is at. I’m one of those people who looks forward. It’s ‘what’s next?’ I’m still motivated by many of the same things. (It would) be wrong to pretend otherwise. I still care about making a difference, trying to change people’s lives for the better.”
He wanted to “use the experience I’ve had of being a young prime minister to do that in a different way”.
Sunak referred to the Richmond charitable project he had set up with his wife Akshata to help develop maths and numeracy skills among young people. That this is named after his constituency of Richmond and Northallerton in Yorkshire might be a hint that he is not yet ready to give up being an MP.
More than once, he told Robinson: “Look, I am 44. I’ve got years ahead of me, and I don’t want being prime minister to be the only thing that defines me, professionally. I think I’ve got plenty more to contribute, and I’m just going to do that in a different way going forward.”
Sunak with Boris Johnson
He rejected the suggestion that there might have been a moment when he “wanted out” and flee to California.
Sunak said: “The ironic thing is that when I moved back to the UK, it was because I missed home. Years ago, I worked in California for a while. But I came home because I missed it, missed my family.
“This is my home, right? That’s where I went (to Richmond in Yorkshire) after that election (defeat) morning. And I love it. I am here as an MP. I love being an MP.” Sunak was frank in acknowledging that his authority as prime minister was limited, because the Conservative parliamentary party was not united.
“Also, politically, a large part of the Conservative party, indeed, the wider Conservative family, was not best pleased to see me in the job.”
Asked why he had appointed Suella Braverman as home secretary, although she came from the hard right of the party, he explained he decided to adopt the “big tent” approach.
“Remember, your ability to get things done in part is a function of your political position, and that is the reality – that I hadn’t won a leadership election,” he said.
“At the time it was a good thing for the country that the party just got on with it. But it hindered me in being able to do the job. I hadn’t won a national election.”
Asked if he assumed he would lose the general election – which most people in the country did – he said: “I didn’t think that. You can’t do this job if you think that. I thought I could make a difference. (But) I knew it’d be very hard.”
He had become prime minister during Diwali of 2022 and was able to light candles in Downing Street, which he had first done as chancellor.
That had been a source of huge pride for him and his family. Two generations after his grandparents arrived in Britain, their grandson was in Downing Street.
“People kind of noted it, but got on with their lives,” Sunak said. “That said something special about our country.”
His maternal grandfather lived to see him become prime minister. “He wasn’t particularly well, but he did come to Downing Street which was very special. He actually passed away after I stepped down as leader of the opposition.”
Sunak spoke at his grandfather’s funeral. “He grew up in a village in northern India (where) there was no running water, electricity, any of these things. He had a scar across his chest because his dad had kept cattle. And an ox at some point – when he was a kid – had injured him with its horns. I was talking about the circumstances in which he grew up. And he got to come to Downing Street and sit in my office and see my red box. And it meant a lot to him.”
His mother’s family had settled in Leicester, where his grandfather worked for decades as a civil servant for HMRC, played tennis at his local club into his seventies and was a long-time member of the Lions’ Club.
Sunak spoke about how his parents had brought him up, along with his brother and sister, to believe that education was the way to bring about social mobility.
Sunak with Suella Braverman
And he explained how his sense of “duty” had been guided by the notion of dharma in Hinduism, as he has done before (in an interview with Eastern Eye on the eve of the general election last July), but this time in greater depth.
He referred to Lord Krishna’s discourse with Arjuna in the Mahabharata which made up the Bhagvad Gita.
“This is one of our religious scriptures,” Sunak said, recalling he had sworn on the Gita when he became an MP in 2015 and, later, a member of the Privy Council.
“Dharma is a concept of duty which is described in there, which is about doing your duty, detaching yourself from the outcomes. You are entitled to put the effort in. You’re not entitled to the fruits of that effort and you’ve just got to focus on doing your best.”
This was “a very helpful concept” for him when he decided he would take on the challenge of becoming prime minister. “I said, ‘Look, this is my job. This is what I’m here to do. I’m well placed to try and solve the economic challenge that our country is facing.’”
Sunak always kept a statue of Ganesh on his table. When then prime minister Boris Johnson fell seriously ill with Covid, Sunak was chancellor. He cleared his desk to give the prime minister greater freedom to move around.
But Sunak left his statue of Ganesh behind in the hope it would bring the prime minister good luck – “which it did”