Rishi Sunak

Sunak in 2020

Rishi Sunak (born 12 May 1980) is a British Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Second Johnson ministry from 2020 to 2022. He gained the appointment after the resignation of Sajid Javid in February 2020. He has been the MP for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.

Quotes

2019

• You are highly accountable. That's what I like about it. You are responsible for your investments and either they're good or they're bad ... There are nor many other people to blame, there's nowhere to hide.
  • Said on the BBC's Political Thinking podcast. The Rishi Sunak One (11 October 2019). Quoted in the Guardian's Rishi Sunak: the bit-part hedge fund partner now managing the economy (8 March 2020)

2020

• Now, more than any time in our history, we will be judged by our capacity for compassion.  Our ability to come through this, won’t just be down to what government or businesses do, but by the individual acts of kindness that we show each other. The small business who does everything they can not to lay off their staff.  The student who does a shop for their elderly neighbour.  The retired nurse who volunteers to cover some shifts in their local hospital. When this is over, and it will be over, we want to look back on this moment and remember the many small acts of kindness done by us and to us.  We want to look back on this time and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency.  We want to look back on this time and remember how, in the face of a generation-defining moment, we undertook a collective national effort - and we stood together.  It’s on all of us.
  • Statement on the Coronavirus as Chancellor (20 March 2020)
  • Instagram post @rishisunakmp (21 March 2020)

2022

• I managed to start changing the funding formulas, to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserve because we inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.
  • Speech delivered in Tunbridge Wells, Kent (29 July 2022)

Quotes about Sunak

Quotes in alphabetical order according to author

• Rishi Sunak’s £330bn Tuesday bailout was rather better received – the scale of the package suggested there was some form of intelligent life in cabinet – but after two days of going through the fine detail, those MPs who were still coming to the Commons had come to the conclusion there was rather less to the chancellor’s plan than had met the eye.
  • Written by John Crace after Sunak's budget was released. Quoted in the Guardian. What we wouldn't give for a Gordon Brown or John Major right now (19 March 2020)

• The PM has a ‘yes man’ in position at the Treasury, who won’t resist pressure to spend more, if the economy starts to buckle under the strain of Brexit.
  • Said by Samuel Tombs, a consultant economist. Quoted in the Guardian. New chancellor Rishi Sunak challenged over hedge fund past (14 February 2020)

• Rishi Sunak is mastering political popularity 101... Promise everyone insane amounts of money. I'm very glad he's done it, but I'm also very terrified at what'll happen when the government needs to pay off this new-found national debt! Gonna be a long few years.
  • Tweeted by Benjamin Zands