Rishi Sunak’s Online Reputation As UK Prime Minister [CASE STUDY]

Rishi Sunak is the new leader of the British Conservative Party after the resignation of Liz Truss.

As the head of the majority party, he will automatically be appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

At just 42, he will be the youngest Prime Minister in the country’s history and the first of Asian descent.

ReputationUP analyzed Rishi Sunak’s online reputation after the designation.

For the study were considered the dates of 24 and 25 October, the days in which he was elected leader of the Tories and appointed by King Charles III as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Who is Rishi Sunak?

Rashi Sunak was born on May 12, 1980 in Southampton, to parents from India who emigrated to the country in the 1960s.

Student of Economics and Philosophy at Oxford, he earned a master’s degree from Stanford and entered the world of finance as an analyst for Goldman Sachs.

His positive personal reputation continues as he takes on the director role of investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy.

In 2009 Rishi Sunak married the daughter of the Indian tycoon, Akshata Murthy, with whom he has two daughters.

As reported by the BBC, his wife’s finances fell into the spotlight last April, putting his career at risk.

Considered one of the UK’s richest MPs, he was first elected in 2015 as an MP for the Richmond constituency in North Yorkshire.

His political reputation is in line with the political rise in the Conservative party, which culminated with his election as leader of the Tories on October 24.

This appointment comes to face a united front against the period of economic difficulty that Europe is going through.

The political trajectory of Rishi Sunak

The resignation of Liz Truss leaves the top position in the Conservative party open.

The contenders are Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, who retires seeing the reputational risk and aware of not being able to snatch the victory from his rival.

A fervent supporter of Brexit and a loyal supporter of Boris Johnson.

He follows the Prime Minister’s government by being appointed First Secretary of the Treasury.

In 2019 he was re-elected as the representative of the conservatives and attended various televised debates in the name of the party.

In February 2020, he was promoted to Exchequer Chancellor shortly before the pandemic.

Precisely during the period of emergency dictated by the Coronavirus, Sunak stands out for promoting some loans in favor of families and companies.

At the same time, he opposes a carbon tax to reduce emissions because he sees it as counterproductive for low-income citizens.

A September 2020 Ipsos MORI survey gives him as the chancellor with the highest satisfaction score since 1978.

64% of citizens said they were happy with Sunak’s work as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In that analysis, Rishi Sunak surpassed ex-Prime Minister Johnson and the opposition leader Keir Stramer.

The end of the Johnson government

In the summer of 2022, after another scandal affecting Johnson’s government, Rishi Sunak delivered his resignation letters.

Together with him, 59 other Secretaries of State, Ministers, and Parliamentary Secretaries did the same.

Following the resignation delivered shortly after that by Boris Johnson, Sunak is a candidate for the position but is beaten by Liz Truss.

On October 24, 2022, he managed to win the majority of the votes on his second attempt to lead the Tories.

As the majority party’s leader, Rishi Sunak has been named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and is preparing to represent him among the G7 leaders.

The official meeting with Charles III took place on October 25, marking the beginning of his role as Prime Minister.

This is the first under the new kingdom but the third this year.

The resignation of Liz Truss

The election of Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservatives comes after the resignation of Liz Truss.

She marked the shortest leadership in the history of the United Kingdom: only 45 days as a strategy of crisis management to avoid a significant reputational crisis.

Her resignation reopened the competition for the conservative party’s leadership, the English Parliament’s majority.

Appointed Prime Minister on September 6, 2022, British politics entered to fill the position left uncovered by Boris Johnson.

The lack of a clear vision to solve the current economic crisis immediately caused controversy.

Her proposal included a £ 45 billion package of tax cuts that would have favored the wealthiest social strata and opened the doors to numerous public loans.

The result? The value of the pound collapses, and foreign markets go crazy.

The reaction of the markets and the lack of solid support among the different parts of the party led Liz Truss to resign on October 20.

In her latest speech as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Truss points out the goodness of Brexit and the need for an economic policy that benefits all:

“We need to take advantage of our Brexit freedoms to do things differently. This means delivering more freedom for our own citizens and restoring power in democratic institutions.

It means lower taxes, so people keep more of the money they earn. It means delivering growth that will lead to more job security, higher wages and greater opportunities for our children and grandchildren.”

She concludes with a wish for the work of Rishi Sunak so that she can lead the country during the storm it is going through.

Truss has again generated a lot of controversy for the lack of excuses about the political and economic chaos that her plan would have caused.

The reaction of the markets to the appointment of Rishi Sunak

The United Kingdom, like all of Europe, is going through a tremendous economic and energy crisis.

The country’s financial reputation is at risk due to the possible recession set to affect it.

Markets did not fluctuate strongly after news of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, who still has a good financial reputation.

Therefore, trust in the economic aspect.

The cautious response of the international market to the new British situation comes after the disastrous result of the Truss policies.

With the new tax reform announcement, the pound had collapsed to 1,035 against the dollar, the lowest since 1971.

The statement released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Reuters added to this.

The United Nations authority has called on the British government to reconsider the maneuver.

More support for households and businesses instead of a generic tax cut that would imply a sharp increase in public spending.

The forecasts on Sunak’s economic policies, while certainly more traditional and moderate, do not cause great turmoil for now.

The analysis

For Rishi Sunak’s reputation monitoring, ReputationUP’s analysis focused on the dates between 24 and 25 October.

The selected days correspond to the election as leader of the Conservative party and the appointment as Prime Minister.

The parameters taken into consideration are the following:

• Results;
• Engagement;
• Sentiment;
• Trend;
• Emotions.

The monitoring was achieved thanks to the patented software RepUP Monitoring Tool.

It analyzes in real-time all the material available online thanks to a combination of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.

The results

The reputational analysis of the results is based on all interactions in a given period, including mentions, likes, or comments.

In 24 hours, Rishi Sunak generated 267,000 results online.

An increase of + 298% compared to the previous period.

The peak of results occurs in the early afternoon of October 24, when the name of Sunak resonates like that of the leader of the Tories.

This result is explained by considering that, at the moment of the announcement, the appointment as Prime Minister was taken for granted.

Engagement

In the graph below, the engagement of the results is divided by social network.

As you can see, the social network that most received Sunak’s appointment is Twitter.

The result is not surprising as world leaders use this social network as an official channel.

Many messages of good wishes to the new British Prime Minister, therefore, focus attention on Twitter likes.

Before today, however, the official account of Rishi Sunak did not shine in the number of publications.

In the second position, retweets are relevant, but to a much lesser extent.

The Twitter statistics show that on October 25, the hashtag #RashiSunak was positioned at 11th, with 634 thousand tweets.

The results are set to grow after the first wave of interest, with a potential reach of 168.7 billion.

The level of engagement over time increased by + 233% in the period under consideration, reaching 2.3 million users.

Sentiment

Sentiment calculates the percentage of positive or negative sentiment generated by users on social networks.

Starting from it, the ReputationUP Study Center also calculated the net sentiment generated by Rishi Sunak on the web.

This is the net percentage, measured on a scale of -100 to 100.

The result is visible in the following graph.

Rishi Sunak’s net sentiment is -58% but has seen a significant upside in the past few hours, with an improvement of 30.9%.

Analyzing the two components of positive and negative sentiment, the positive stands at 10.1%, while the negative is at 38%.

It is reasonable to think that the net sentiment will increase towards positive in the coming days, confirming Sunak’s digital reputation.

Trend

The trending topics that most relate to the name of the newly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom tend to be neutral.

Particularly noteworthy are those who refer to Labor’s request to call early elections due to internal instability within the Conservatives (#GeneralElectionNow).

The negative trends refer mainly to the Tory party (#ToriesOut, #ToryTraitors).

Among the positive ones, however, the hashtag #India stands out, referring to the origins of Rishi Sunak.

Emotions

The RepUP Monitoring Tool also monitored the emotions generated by Rishi Sunak.

Fear and joy are the emotions that have undergone the most significant variation: + 390% and + 375%, respectively.

To a lesser extent, sadness also grows, + 259%, and anger, + 127%.

While only a + 14% for the surprise.

Indeed, Sunak’s name was already well known in the British political scene and his election to the head of the party did not surprise much.

Conclusions

The ReputationUP Study Center, a leading company in online reputation management, analyzed the online image of Rishi Sunak.

These are the conclusions you can draw from the analysis:

• In the 24 hours analyzed, Rishi Sunak generated 267 thousand results online;
• Among the social networks, the most consistent data refer to likes on Twitter;
• Rishi Sunak’s positive sentiment was 10.1%, while the negative was 38%;
• Net sentiment stood at -58%, recording an increase of 30.9% compared to the previous period;
• Fear and joy are the two emotions that show the most significant growth.

Thanks to the RepUP Monitoring Tool, ReputationUP’s patented monitoring software, the most important data on Rishi Sunak’s online reputation and sentiment were observed.

The analysis shows an increase in interest in the new protagonist of the British political scene.