How Tall Is Britain's New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Exactly?
We're confused
The U.K. has a new prime minister, its third in as many months. His name is Rishi Sunak, and he’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, an ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker, and a trophy husband to a billionaire heiress.
Sunak won the post less by popular support and more by process of elimination. After Liz Truss resigned from her record-short term of 45 days last Thursday, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson briefly threw his hat in the ring. So did the ominous-sounding Penny Mordaunt, a Tory MP who once appeared on a British reality series called Splash!, about celebrities who learn to dive (she belly-flopped). But Johnson pulled out on Sunday, presumably after learning that the Tories still hate him; Mordaunt killed her bid on Monday. So Sunak summited, and we wish him the best of luck. Surely the man who, six months ago, ordered the Royal Mint to create a government-backed NFT will turn the economy around.
With the race behind Britain, the public can ask the harder questions. For example: How tall is he? But such intel is difficult to pin down.
We know for certain that Sunak is a smaller guy. You can see as much here:
And here:
He looks great for a Tory millionaire, so who cares. But for a former finance minister, his numbers are all over the place. Google claims he is 5 feet 7 inches. Some articles say 5 feet 6 inches. A few others say 5 feet 5 inches. Part of the trouble may stem from Britain’s insistence on using the metric system. The most frequently cited number is 170 cm, which takes us to 5.57743 feet, or 5 feet 6.9 inches.
But that doesn’t explain how Sunak looks in pictures, where one can find him in such a range of possible heights via weird angles and awkward crops that it’s become a running gag in England. Consider this snap from the Treasury’s 2021 budget:
Or this photo spread of election candidates:
Height calculations for public figures are almost never accurate. But if we accept the 170 cm figure at face value, Sunak is the shortest Prime Minister since Winston Churchill, and the second-shortest to date. Churchill, for the record, was 168.9 cm, or 5 feet 6.5 inches. Here’s a photo of him with Charles De Gaulle (196 cm, or 6 feet 5 inches):
If we trust celebrity height chronicler, CelebHeights.com, Sunak is also shorter than former PM Theresa May, who stands at an alleged 172.1 cm, or 5 feet 7.8 inches. But our photo subscription service Getty Images doesn’t have any pictures of them together, so we’ll have to take their word for it.
Sunak is shorter than May’s successor, Boris Johnson, who clocks in around 5 feet 8.9 inches (175 cm). You wouldn’t know it from photos like this one:
Or this one:
You can kind of see it here:
But again, so hard to say.
Sunak is taller than his ex-rival and now predecessor, Liz Truss, who Celeb Heights says is 5 feet 5.25 inches (165.7 cm). Or is he?
Looks like Liz has the upper height here:
But she is in heels:
How big is this dog?
Here he is with some other guys in a photo taken from a regular angle.
He’s definitely taller than his wife, Akshata Murthy, the daughter of billionaire Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy:
He’s also taller than this child:
It seems the jury’s out. But if the “dirty dossier” Sunak’s Tory opponents circulated this summer is accurate, he has a “big tax and big spend” agenda in store for England. In the meantime, one must imagine Sunak is happy. Here he is after his new post was announced today:
