A PIO at No. 10 soon, Cameron had told Modi barely seven years ago

After being defeated in a leadership election less than two months ago, Rishi Sunak on Monday snatched victory and became the only candidate to have cleared the threshold of 100 MP nominations making him automatically the next Conservative leader and British prime minister.

- Naomi Canton

The race went right down to the wire with his rival Penny Mordaunt's team claiming she was just short of the 100 nominations right up till the nominations deadline closed at 18.30 IST (2 pm local time).

At 1.59 pm, Mordaunt, the hitherto leader of the House of Commons, put out a tweet withdrawing from the race, saying "it is clear that colleagues feel we need certainty today. They have taken this decision in good faith for the good of the country. We all owe it to the country, to each other, and to Rishi to unite and work together for the good of the nation. Rishi has my full support." 

This meant the Conservative leadership race was over, and Sunak, the youngest UK PM since 1812 at 42, automatically became the Conservative leader. Although Mordaunt thought many of former PM Boris Johnson's supporters would switch to her after he bailed out, in fact many of them, including Priti Patel, on Monday morning switched to backing Sunak.

Sunak becomes the UK's youngest PM since 1812 when Robert Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, became PM. Ironically, his mother's grandmother was born in Kolkata and descended from Portuguese settlers in India.