Almost two months after his failure against Liz Truss, he is getting his revenge.
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak was named the new leader of Britain's Conservative Party on Monday after Penny Mordaunt quit, paving the way for him to become prime minister.
Aged 42, he thus becomes the youngest British Prime Minister since 1812, and the first non-white person to head the government.
Less than a week after the resignation of Liz Truss, this ex-banker succeeds the one who had beaten him in September for the presidency of the party, where he had obtained only 42.6% of the votes in the second round.
His appointment was a formality after Boris Johnson's surprise resignation this Sunday evening, since Rishi Sunak was alone in the running.
Boris Johnson said in a statement on Sunday evening that he had the 100 supporters needed to stand for this internal majority process, but that he had given up due to divisions in the right-wing formation.
“I came to the sad conclusion that it just wouldn't be the right thing to do.
You can't govern effectively if you don't have a united party in parliament,” he explained.
Penny Mordaunt, her other rival for the job, conceded defeat early in the afternoon.
Fifth prime minister in six years
By becoming the tenant of 10 Downing Street, Rishi Sunak is thus the fifth Prime Minister since the Brexit referendum of 2016, which opened a page of unprecedented economic and political turbulence in the United Kingdom.
The former Chancellor, guardian of budgetary orthodoxy and workaholic, seduces a large part of his camp, while the country is going through a severe economic and social crisis, further aggravated by the mistakes of Liz Truss who destabilized the markets and drops the pound.
He had regularly denounced this summer the economic plan of Liz Truss, during the campaign for the head of the conservative party on the occasion of which they had clashed.
In force in the polls, the Labor opposition has meanwhile reiterated its call for early elections.
“The Tories are about to hand Rishi Sunak the keys to the country without him saying a word how he will govern,” Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted, “nobody voted for that ".