All To Play For

The speed of Rishi Sunak's advance to 10 Downing Street is without precedent in modern British politics. In the middle of 2019, he was an unknown junior minister; seven months later, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and by October 2022, he had secured the highest office in the land. Aged forty-two, he was Britain's youngest Prime Minister for more than 200 years. He was also the fifth person to occupy the post since 2016. Michael Ashcroft's carefully researched biography - first published in 2020 and now fully revised and updated - charts Sunak's ascent from his parents' Southampton pharmacy to the University of Oxford, the City of London, Silicon Valley and Westminster before assuming the most powerful job in the country in chaotic circumstances. It is the story of a clever and hard-working son of immigrant parents who marries an Indian heiress and makes a fortune of his own; a polished urban southerner who wins over the voters of rural North Yorkshire; a fiscally conservative financier who becomes the biggest-spending Chancellor in history; and a fastidious political operator tasked with fixing the nation's problems and reuniting the Conservative Party while grappling with an economy in a state of flux. Casting new light on Sunak's tense working relationship with his predecessor, Boris Johnson, All to Play For shows what makes the Prime Minister tick ahead of a general election whose outcome will have profound consequences for Britain's future.