Rishi Sunak has been appointed as Chancellor after Sajid Javid resigned over rows with Boris Johnson’s team – including top aide Dominic Cummings.
He was set to keep his job – but he quit as Chancellor when Number 10 ordered him to sack his team of advisors, a source close to the former minister said.
In a shock move just 27 days before the Budget, Mr Javid announced “no self-respecting minister” could accept the condition being imposed.
It is thought to be the first time a Chancellor has resigned in protest for 31 years after Nigel Lawson quit under Margaret Thatcher in 1989.
His resignation makes Mr Javid the shortest-serving Chancellor for 50 years – and the last one only left the job because he died.
Sunak is a relative newcomer to politics having been elected as MP for Richmond in Yorkshire in 2015.
He previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the second in command to the Chancellor. He backed Leave at the referendum and voted for Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
He played a key role in the December election by representing the government in the televised debates. Sunak was seen as a competent media performer and succeeded in doggedly sticking to the line.
Born in Southampton to a GP father and pharmacist mother he is the eldest of three siblings. Sunak’s grandparents were born in Punjab, India and emigrated to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s.
He went to illustrious private school Winchester College before studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford and then gaining an MBA from Stanford University where he was a Fulbright scholar.