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Ariana Baio
Jul 08, 2022
Rishi Sunak announces Tory leadership bid
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On Friday, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced his bid for leadership just one day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his intent to resign.
Launching with the domain ready4rishi.com, Sunak, 42, has begun a campaign to be the next conservative leader.
"We need to restore trust in our politics. We need to rebuild our economy. And we need to reunite the country" a tagline on Sunak's website reads.
Sunak resigned from his position as Chancellor on Tuesday alongside Health Secretary Sajid Javid, sparking a train of resignations from Johnson's government.
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While Sunak and Javid's resignations were unexpected, some Twitter users are speculating Sunak planned on running for a leadership position because the domain "readyforrishi.com", which re-directs to "ready4rishi.com", was registered in December 2021.
\u201cFYI - he's using the domain name https://t.co/mC3BUPjp0t (which was only registered on 6th July) to cover up for the fact that https://t.co/skTHVeyUvS (which redirects to ready4rishi so I'm assuming he owns it) was registered in December 2021.\n\nPlanned for 6 months. Imagine that.\u201d— Nathan Steele (@Nathan Steele) 1657296400
Using the website who.is, users can find "readyforrishi.com" was first registered with GoDaddy on December 23, 2021 while "ready4rishi.com" was registered on July 6, 2022, just two days after Sunak resigned.
We reached out to Sunak for comment and clarity.
Mirror reporter Mikey Smith tweeted that a member of Sunak's team clarified that the the domain for Sunak's site is "ready4rishi.com" but did not clarify if "readyforrishi.com" was bought by Sunak or his team.
\u201cAsked if the domain was registered by Team Rishi, they replied: \u201cPeople buy domains all the time. We\u2019ve also been transferred a number of domains\u201d\n\n\ud83e\udd14\u201d— Mikey Smith (@Mikey Smith) 1657304901
Sunak and the plethora of other ministers who resigned all cited Johnson's mishandling of several scandals over the last year as their reason for leaving.
In his resignation letter, Sunak wrote "Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it's not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different."
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