It’s official: Rishi Sunak is to be the UK’s next Prime Minister.
Now that he’s become the Conservative Party leader, after challenger Penny Mordaunt dropped out, King Charles III will soon officially appoint Rishi as the new leader of the country.
The 42-year-old former Chancellor will not only become the new Prime Minister, taking over for Liz Truss, but will also be the youngest PM we’ve had in modern times.
But is he the youngest ever in UK history? Let’s find out.
Who is the UK’s youngest ever Prime Minister?
Rishi Sunak will become the youngest Prime Minister in the UK for more than 200 years.
We haven’t had a Prime Minister aged 42 or younger since 1812 – when Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, also 42, took the position.
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However, the youngest Prime Minister in all of UK history was known as William Pitt The Younger.
Aged just 24 in 1783, he was not only the youngest Prime Minister of Great Britain, but also the last person to have that exact title – as the Acts of Union (1800) made him officially the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as of January 1801.
He left office that year, but served again from 1804 to 1806, when he died aged 46.
Other young Prime Ministers of centuries past include:
- Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (aged 33, in 1768)
- Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (aged 35, in 1765)
- William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire (aged 36, in 1756)
- Frederick North (aged 37, in 1770).
But have we had many younger leaders in recent years?
Well, the youngest PM from the years 1940 to 1990 was Harold Wilson, who was 48 in 1964 when he was appointed.
Margaret Thatcher, by comparison, became PM aged 53, and Sir Winston Churchill was aged 65 when he first took office, and 76 when he returned a second time.
From the 1990s onward, the UK’s leaders averaged a considerably lower age – both Tony Blair and David Cameron were just a year older than Mr Sunak at age 43 when they became PM.
Sir John Major and Liz Truss were both 47, while Boris Johnson was 55, Gordon Brown was 56 and Theresa May was 59.
The oldest Prime Minister the country has ever seen, though, was William Gladstone, who became PM on four separate occasions in the 1800s – but was 82 years old when he did for the final time in 1892.
MORE : Rishi Sunak will have a ‘patient and professional’ leadership style as PM
MORE : From mum’s ‘tiny’ chemist’s to the door of No10: Rishi Sunak’s journey to PM
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