Britain’s political fever dream continued apace this week as Rishi Sunak became prime minister without anyone even voting for him. The former chancellor, the country’s third prime minister in less than two months and the fifth in six years, is also the UK’s first leader of colour and the first Hindu to take the office.
Sunak’s elevation – after a turbo-charged Tory leadership contest that briefly threatened to reopen the door for Boris Johnson – followed the sudden but predictable demise of Liz Truss, who quit last Friday after seven economically disastrous weeks.
It’s worth remembering that Sunak’s sudden rise to power has been precipitated by the mis-steps of his predecessors, Johnson and Truss. Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar profile the man whose political career appeared dead and buried just two months ago, and ask whether a man thought to be twice as rich as King Charles III is really the right person to lead the country through an acute cost-of-living crisis.
Then, Jonathan Freedland considers how big a blow Truss’s ill-judged stint in power has delivered to the school of neoliberal economic thought.
At the time of going to press, Sunak was still the prime minister – but in Britain’s new political reality, who can say who will be in charge tomorrow, let alone by the time this week’s Guardian Weekly magazine reaches you?
Brazil also faces a judgment day this weekend, as Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva square up in a presidential runoff of deep significance for the country and the planet, with the protection of the Amazon at stake. The outcome is on such a knife-edge that not even the nation’s gangsters can decide who to vote for, as our Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports.
On the subject of the environment, don’t miss Naomi Klein’s long read about how Egypt’s government has used the coming Cop27 conference to greenwash its own oppressive political activities.
Then, there’s a revealing interview with Chelsea Manning, who opens up to Emma Brockes on what really happened when she leaked thousands of classified US military documents.
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