Boris Johnson has appointed three Indian-origin leaders in his top ministerial team, dubbed Britain’s most diverse Cabinet, after he took over as the new prime minister with a pledge that the UK would leave the EU on October 31.
Hours after Johnson was appointed by the Queen as Britain’s new prime minister, he named Priti Patel Home Secretary, Alok Sharma as the International Development Secretary and Rishi Sunak as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They attended their first Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street on Thursday morning, on the way to which Sunak declared the new UK government was toughening up .
Patel will now be in charge of the UK’s security, immigration and visa policies. The 47-year-old has vowed to fight the scourge of crime and will be in the hot seat to fulfil some of her past promises of a fairer post-Brexit visa regime for everyone around the world, free of the freedom-of-movement norms imposed by the EU.
“The pressures being put on our services by immigration from the EU have meant that tough limits have been put in place on immigration from outside the EU,” she said during her time as one of the prominent leaders of the Vote Leave campaign in the lead-up to the June 2016 Brexit referendum.
Fellow Brexiteer Sunak had also issued similar open letters in favour of fairer visa norms for everyone in the world.
The 39-year-old Conservative Party MP, who is married to Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s daughter Akshata, is an MBA graduate and investment expert. He takes charge of one of the most important jobs in the UK Treasury, serving under new Chancellor Sajid Javid.
Alok Sharma backed Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership contest as “the leader best placed to launch a coherent unambiguous plan to deliver Brexit and take us out of the European Union”.
The Cabinet, which also includes Pakistani-origin Javid in the top job of Chancellor, has more ethnic minority key ministers than ever before.