Rishi Sunak Cheers Up UK's Tories, But Opposition Senses Weakness

Britain on Wednesday saw the outlines of the next no-holds-barred general election campaign, after multimillionaire Rishi Sunak took office as the third prime minister of the year.

Sunak gave as good as he got from the opposition Labour party at his first session of "Prime Minister's Questions" -- delighting his Conservative backbenchers after the turmoil of recent weeks.

First Boris Johnson was forced out, after one scandal too many. Then the MPs voted for Sunak against Liz Truss as leader, only for the party's largely white, wealthy and southern English members to overrule them.

"The only time he ran in a competitive election, he got trounced by the former prime minister, who herself got beaten by a lettuce," Labour leader Keir Starmer mocked Sunak in a febrile House of Commons.

Truss suffered a political demise so rapid that a celebrity lettuce outlasted her in an online stream shown by the Daily Star newspaper.

At her last Prime Minister's Questions a week ago, Truss declared to Starmer that she was "a fighter, and not a quitter". Tory MPs behind her sat in glowering silence. The next day, she quit.

With Sunak now in charge after seeing off a brazen comeback bid by Johnson, the same Tory MPs cheered and thumped the Commons benches -- prompting Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to warn: "Don't damage the furniture!"

Sunak reminded Starmer that he was beaten by Truss because Tory members did not believe his warnings of the economic carnage that her tax-cutting policies would provoke.

He contrasted that with Starmer's own support for the far-left Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister, when Corbyn led Labour to defeat at the last election in 2019.

"I told the truth for the good of the country," the new Conservative leader said.

"He (Starmer) told his party what it wanted to hear. Leadership is not selling fairy tales. It is confronting challenges," he shouted.

Challenges aplenty await Sunak as he tries to unwind the havoc wrought by Truss during her 49 days in power -- the shortest in British history.

Video nasties

But he has already achieved one signal feat in becoming Britain's first prime minister of colour -- a fact acknowledged by Starmer as "part of what makes us all so proud to be British".

Beyond those warm words, Starmer previewed the election campaign onslaught that Sunak can expect, after Labour identified the new leader's fabulous wealth as a key vulnerability at a time of financial crisis for many.

Sunak is a former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund investor. The father of his Indian wife Akshata Murty founded the Infosys business empire.

Together, the couple are said by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £730 million ($847 million) -- more than King Charles III.

Starmer brought up Murty's previous "non domicile" tax status, which dented Sunak's popularity when it was revealed earlier this year.

He also referenced a campaign video that showed Sunak boasting of diverting government funds from deprived areas to a well-heeled corner of southeast England.

A spokesman for Starmer said Labour's focus groups had also found deep disfavour among voters with another embarrassing spot, in which Sunak struggled to understand how to pay for items at a petrol station with a debit card.

The cumulative picture is of an expensively coutured prime minister so out of touch that he cannot be trusted to identify with the struggles of ordinary Britons.

Sunak's team will need to come up with a convincing rebuttal.

A national election is due by January 2025 at the latest, but could well come sooner if Labour and other opposition parties have their way.

Outside parliament, protesters gave their own verdict of Sunak, a self-confessed "Star Wars geek". At full amplification, they played "The Imperial March", Darth Vader's ominous theme.

With the Conservatives' collapsed poll ratings following Johnson and Truss, the untested new prime minister needs to show his restive party that the electoral force is strong with him.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)