Sunak will have to gird up to go into battle on multiple fronts

New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak once told a group of schoolchildren that he originally wanted to be a Star Wars Jedi Knight when he grew up. As the country’s first non-white PM, he will have to gird up to go into battle on multiple fronts. While some in the UK – and in Africa – liken his elevation to the election of Barack Obama in the US, the reality is quite different. Sunak is a conservative – both in party and in deed – and, although his family, like Obama’s, has links to East Africa, he is hardly a…

New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak once told a group of schoolchildren that he originally wanted to be a Star Wars Jedi Knight when he grew up. As the country’s first non-white PM, he will have to gird up to go into battle on multiple fronts.

While some in the UK – and in Africa – liken his elevation to the election of Barack Obama in the US, the reality is quite different. Sunak is a conservative – both in party and in deed – and, although his family, like Obama’s, has links to East Africa, he is hardly a champion of the developing world.

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How could he be, with a personal fortune estimated at R15 billion? As a Tory, he will support any moves to look after the already rich at the expense of those at the bottom of society’s pyramid – although he will have to find some milk of human kindness to look after those impoverished by Tory policy.

This is the party, remember, which brought Brexit to the country – and, effectively, made middle- and lower-class people poorer and Britain a near-pariah internationally. And given that he has none of the Obama magic, perhaps he really needs a miracle light sabre.