Nadhim Zahawi denies he threatened to resign before being appointed chancellor
(Picture: PA)Nadhim Zahawi on Wednesday welled up as he described his journey from child refugee to chancellor.
The 55-year-old, who was born in Iraq, has had a meteoric rise to power after joining the Cabinet as education secretary less than a year ago.
He now enters the Treasury with the task of steering the country through a cost of living crisis and avoiding a looming recession.
“I pinch myself every morning to wake up,” he told BBC Radio 4. “To think the 11-year-old who arrived on these shores who couldn’t speak a word of English is now the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Her Majesty’s Government. This is the greatest country on earth.”
Mr Zahawi became Boris Johnson’s third chancellor after Rishi Sunak dramatically quit. Health Secretary Sajid Javid also stepped down.
Today, Mr Zahawi strenuously denied rumours that he too had walked into No10 with the intention of resigning unless he was offered the second highest job in British politics.
“No, I didn’t threaten to resign at all,” he told Sky News. When asked about reports that Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was originally in line for the role, but Mr Zahawi would quit unless it was handed to him, he added: “That is not true.”
Born in Baghdad in 1967, Mr Zahawi and his influential family were forced to flee the country when his businessman father was tipped-off that Saddam Hussein’s henchmen were coming.
He grew up in Sussex and was educated at comprehensive and private schools. Before entering politics, Mr Zahawi pursued a successful business career. After studying chemical engineering at University College London, he set up a firm selling Teletubbies merchandise.
The keen equestrian, who owns a riding school with his wife Lana, was an adviser to disgraced former Tory MP Jeffrey Archer, and in 2000 he co-founded the polling company YouGov.
Following a 12-year stint as a councillor in Wandsworth, he first entered parliament in 2010 as MP for Stratford-upon-Avon.
He was appointed to the No10 policy unit, but was largely overlooked for government jobs under then PM David Cameron. The Brexiteer got his first junior minister role in 2018 in the Department for Education.
But it was in November 2020, when he was promoted to oversee the UK’s Covid vaccine rollout, that he became a household name and was praised for his calm media performances during the pandemic.
He has now been tipped as a frontrunner to take over from the wounded Mr Johnson.
