Rishi Sunak to take office as British prime minister after meeting with King Charles III

He would have faced a colossal task without this upheaval: The U.K. is already mired in a daunting cost-of-living crisis that means millions of people may struggle to eat and heat their homes this winter.

Now he must seek to address this, as well as ameliorate the damage wrought by the rapidly-reversed experiment with “Trussanomics.”

At 42, Sunak will be the youngest prime minister in more than 200 years. The son of African-born Hindus of Indian descent, he is also the country’s first ethnic minority leader in 140 years, after Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the 1800s, who was of Jewish descent but a practicing Christian.

Though Sunak is a former banker, it’s through his wife’s father, an Indian software tycoon, that the couple sits on an estimated 730 million-pound fortune ($825 million) — making them richer than the king and Camila, the queen consort.

Having a new prime minister is usually a big deal in the U.K.

It happened only four times between Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and David Cameron in 2010. But Britons may be forgiven for being far more weary today, with Sunak the fifth Conservative prime minister in a little over six years.

The latest round of upheaval started in July when Boris Johnson was forced to quit after a string of scandals prompted mass resignations from his government. Sunak, his finance minister at the time, was first among them.

He was also the favorite to replace Johnson but was surprisingly beaten by Truss, whose tax-cutting was more popular among the Conservative Party’s 200,000 members. Now, after Truss’ rapid resignation and Johnson’s aborted comeback bid, Sunak has the top job.

In the U.K., the party with the most lawmakers in the House of Commons can appoint a new leader without holding a nationwide election.

That dynamic has prompted criticism from the left-of-center opposition Labour Party, but with Labour soaring in the polls and the Conservatives demoralized, Sunak is likely to focus on steadying markets and his colleagues.