Easy News: Rishi Sunak becomes the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1. 

   Rishi Sunak became the new Prime Minister on the 25th of October. He replaced Liz Truss.

2. 

   Liz Truss was elected Prime Minister in September after Boris Johnson resigned on the 7th of July this year. Resigning is when you quit your job.

3. 

   The Conservative Party had a leadership election in the summer where all the members of the Party voted for who they would like to be the Party leader and the new Prime Minister.

4. 

   Liz Truss won because she got 81,000 votes. Rishi Sunak was also in the contest but he only got 60,000 votes.

5. 

   When Liz Truss became Prime Minister, she said she would take less money from people in taxes. She thought everyone, even very rich people, should pay less tax. This was included in a plan called a mini-budget which she put together with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng.

6. 

   The mini-budget made lots of people worry that the government would lose money and they wouldn’t be able to pay everyone what they had promised to pay.

7. 

   This made the value of the British pound go down compared to other currencies.

8. 

   It also made mortgages more expensive because interest rates went up. Interest rates are costs that people are charged when they borrow money or extra money paid to you when you have money in savings.

9. 

   Liz Truss saw this and changed her mind about changing the rate of taxes.

10. 

    She fired Kwasi Kwarteng from his job as Chancellor and asked Jeremy Hunt to do the job instead, but lots of Conservative MPs were still angry and worried.

11. 

    Some MPs left their jobs and others were sending letters of no confidence. These are letters saying they didn’t want her as the leader of the Party anymore.

12. 

    Liz Truss said she was resigning on the 20th of October. She had been Prime Minister for only 44 days at the time which is the shortest time a person has ever been Prime Minister.

13. 

    Some people wanted Boris Johnson to come back and be the Prime Minister again, but more people chose Rishi Sunak.

14. 

    Conservative MPs think Rishi Sunak will know what the government should spend its money on because he used to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They hope the people who worried when Liz Truss was Prime Minister will be calm and there will be less problems with the country’s money.

15. 

    Rishi Sunak has said that the government should spend less money. He might make people pay more in taxes.

16. 

    Some people are saying that there should be a general election. They think it's unfair that there have been three Prime Ministers since the last election in 2019. They think people should be able to choose who is running the country and not just MPs or Conservative Party members.

17. 

    But some other people think that Rishi Sunak should continue to run the country. They say that the government would stop working during a general election, and it needs to be working to solve problems that are happening now like the cost of living crisis.

18. 

    Rishi Sunak has to call a General Election in 2024. He can decide to call one before then but he does not have to.

19. 

    Sign up here to receive Easy News updates sent to your email inbox. Click here to see previous issues of Easy News.

Back to top