Breaking Records

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf is the third politician of South Asian origin to head a government in the British Isles. The first was Leo Varadkar who served as Irish prime minister from 2017-2020 and is the republic’s current Taoiseach, the second is Rishi Sunak who became Britain’s prime minister last October. They are the first Asians to reach the top in Scotland, Britain, Ireland and Europe.

Yousaf leads the Scottish National Party (SNP), a social democratic party founded in 1934, which campaigns for Scottish independence from Britain. Sunak rose to the leadership of the British Conservative Party, which emerged in 1834, and has been in power since 2010. Varadkar heads the liberal conservative Fine Gael, established in 1933 during Ireland’s struggle for liberation from Britain. Fine Gael currently is in coalition with its traditional rival, Fianna Fail, and the progressive Green Party.

In the 1960s, Yousaf’s father immigrated from the Pakistani Punjab to Glascow in Scotland. His mother fled Kenya for Scotland after suffering post-independence racial attacks by Africans. His father worked as an accountant. The first Muslim premier in the British Isles, Yusaf keeps to his faith while being socially and culturally moderately progressive. On his first day in office, he asked the British government for permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence. This was refused.

Yousaf has been married twice. His first wife was ex-SNP worker Gail Lythgoe (2010-2016). In 2019, he married psychotherapist Nadia al-Naklan who had a child from her first marriage. She and Yousef have a daughter. Naklan is Scotland’s first first lady of Palestinian origin.

Sunak is the first Hindu prime minister in the British Isles. His father is a doctor and mother a pharmacist. They settled in Southampton, in Hampshire, during the 1960s expulsion of Asians from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. His grandfather was from Punjab in post-partition Pakistan, his grandmother was from India. Sunak practices his faith.

Dublin-born Varadkar is the Eurasian son of an Indian doctor from Mumbai and an Irish nurse who met while working at a hospital in Britain. The family spent time in India before settling in Ireland in 1973. He was raised as a Catholic but does not practice his faith.

Yousaf is the youngest at 37, the other two are are in their mid-40s. The three were, like most top politicians in the British Isles, educated at private schools and became involved in politics at a young age.

Yousaf studied politics at the University of Glasgow where he joined the SNP and received his MA in 2007. He was involved in community youth organisations, charity fundraising, and served as volunteer media spokesman of Islamic Relief. Humza worked for community radio for twelve years and participated in a project which supplied food packages to homeless people and asylum seekers in Glasgow.

Sunak was always a highflier. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating with a first in 2001. While at university, he interned with Conservative Campaign Headquarters and joined the Conservative Party. In 2006, Sunak earned a Master of business administration degree from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar. While at Stanford, Sunak met his wife Akshata Murty, the independently wealthy daughter of the founder of India’s Infosys, a Bangalore-based Indian multinational information technology company.

Varadkar joined Young Fine Gael at 16 and attended Ireland’s prestigious Trinity College Dublin where he read law before shifting to medicine. While at university he was active in its Young Fine Gael branch and served as Vice-President of the youth organisation of the European People’s Party of which Fine Gael is a member. He graduated in 2003, after completing his internship at a Mumbai hospital, and spent several years working in Irish hospitals before specialising as a general practitioner.

In May 2011, Yousaf, then 26, was elected to the Scottish Parliament for the Glasgow region. When being sworn in he took his oath of office in English then Urdu, to reflect both backgrounds. He also wore traditional Pakistani dress with a tartan plaid scarf over his shoulder. Under his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf served as health a and justice minister and junior minister of transport and Europe. He was Sturgeon’s candidate for the top job and has appointed ministers from her faction, drawing fire from her rivals.

Sunak initially made career in business. He worked as an analyst for Goldman Sachs bank before shifting to one hedge fund after another and served as a director of an investment firm owned by his billionaire father in-law, N. R. Narayana Murthy who founded Infosys. Sunak joined the Conservative Party in 2010 and won a safe seat in 2015. He supported the controversial 2016 campaign for Britain to leave the European Union (Brexit). He was re-elected in 2017 and in the 2019 early election. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Under Secretary for Local Government.

In protest against the policies of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sunak stepped down as Chancellor in mid-2022, kicking off the most dramatic series of cabinet resignations since 1932 and forcing Johnson to leave office. Sunak then declared his candidacy for the post but lost to Liz Truss who was compelled to resign after 49 days in the post. Since Sunak succeeded her on Oct.25, 2022, he has had to deal with the aftermath of covid, a cost of living crisis, and the dispute with the European Union over the bloc’s connections with Northern Ireland.

Varadkar was twenty years old and a second-year medical student when he unsuccessfully ran in Ireland’s 1999 local elections but was tipped by his party to assume local council seats temporarily until he was elected in the Castleknock area. In 2007, Varadkar was elected to parliament for the Dublin West constituency. He served in the ministries of transport, health, social protection, defence, and trade until he became head of Fine Gael in 2017. He was prime minister from June 2017 until June 2020, Deputy Prime Minister from June 2020 until December 2022 and has been back as premier since December 2022. He has a reputation for being frank and outspoken and defines himself as centre-right. He seeks to create wealth through business and investment in order to distribute the proceeds. He and Fine Gael strongly opposed Brexit.

These three men are heirs of the unsettled post-British colonial era. Yousaf’s parents left British-partitioned India. Sunak’s father and mother fled African countries after they gained independence from Britain. Varadkar’s Indian father and Irish mother tried to make a life in Mumbai but ended in Ireland.

The parents of the three sought to ensure their futures by investing in their education and encouraging them to become politically involved in the land which once ruled the Indian Sub-continent and exported Indians to run and labour in the farflung British empire.

Photo: AP