PERTH: When William Pitt the Younger became British prime minister in 1783 amid another bout of political turmoil brought on not least by the American Revolution, he was barely 24 years old. He went on to helm Britain for 18 years in two stints. I always thought of that as a remarkable feat — a politician so green in age and by extension political experience, having governed what was arguably the largest colonial empire in human history.
And now the historical perspective may indeed be argued to have turned full circle. By submission time for this article, Rishi Sunak, a British-born son of ethnic Indian East African immigrant parents and a practicing Hindu, is set to become the next British prime minister at a comparatively ripe age of 42 — still the youngest since Pitt.
