Image description: Sunak departs 10 Downing Street after the Conservative Party lose the 2024 general election.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street. Picture by Simon Walker. Licensed under CC-BY-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en

Rishi Sunak is set to become a member of the World Leaders Circle of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, it was reported on Wednesday. Sunak studied PPE at Lincoln College from 1998-2001, where he graduated with first class honours. After Oxford, Sunak went on to obtain a Masters in Business Administration at Stanford University in the US. It was also announced that he will be taking up a visiting fellowship at Stanford’s prestigious Hoover Institution.

These are the first new roles Sunak has taken on since his resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party following their decisive loss in the July 2024 general election, though he will continue to serve as MP for Richmond and Northallerton in Yorkshire alongside his new positions. 

The Dean of the Blavatnik school, Professor Ngaire Woods, has welcomed the news of Sunak’s appointment, announcing that ‘we are looking forward to welcoming Rishi Sunak to the Blavatnik School…bringing together a global network of leaders with such rich experience and insight will strengthen our mission to foster a world that is better led, better served, and better governed’. Sunak has also greeted the news of his new appointments, saying that ‘both Blavatnik and Hoover do superb work on how we can rise to the economic and security challenges we face and seize the technological opportunities of our time’.

Sunak’s appointment to Oxford comes just months after the election of Lord William Hague as Chancellor of the university. Hague stepped down as First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons in the same election in which Sunak became an MP, though he has not yet taken up his position at Oxford. He spoke positively about the prospect of working with Sunak, saying that his skills would make him ‘a huge asset’.

This news also comes in the wake of jibes thrown at Sunak in the run up to the 2024 election suggesting he wanted to leave the UK and move to California if the Conservatives did badly in the election (which, of course, they did) – though it seems at the moment that Sunak is planning to stay in the UK.