Rishi Sunak takes charge, here are the challenges he faces

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The most challenging task is the growing economic conflagration in the UK. The country is the only one of the G7 countries to barely recover from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and has the highest inflation in the group. Government debt has ballooned while Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget meant that the market has lost confidence in the government.

The incredibly high inflation has meant that energy costs, prices of food and other essential items have jumped and rapidly cut into the wealth of the British people. With the UK already on austerity measures, national services like the National Health Service are at the breaking point. Employees have been asking for higher wages to account for higher costs of living and strikes over the winter are almost a certainty.

Sunak will need to work with the Bank of England as he reduces spending and increases taxes across the board to start balancing the government’s balance sheets.

One of the biggest promises of the Conservative Party during the previous election was to cut down on immigration. While the promises remain unfulfilled, the inclusion of staunch-anti-immigration politician Suella Braverman as Home Secretary in the new government highlights that Sunak may have to take a call on the matter sooner rather than later.

Sunak has backed a proposal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing but the plan has been stalled due to legal challenges. The new PM has also not made his stance clear on issuing new visas for blue-collar jobs in the future.

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Since Brexit, which Sunak was a supporter of, the matter of Northern Ireland remains unresolved. While Northern Ireland is part of the UK, it borders the Republic of Ireland which is a member state of the European Union. The differing trade rules mean that technically goods can’t freely pass through the border through an interim deal, the Northern Ireland Protocol has put the matter to rest for the moment. However, a new bill in the parliament proposes to scrap the protocol and essentially draw a soft boundary over the Irish sea. This, however, means that the EU is threatening sanctions and the Unionist parties in Northern Ireland have withdrawn their support of the current government, triggering a new political crisis in the territory if not resolved by next month.