Former chief secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak has been promoted to the role of Chancellor today following the resignation of Sajid Javid.

Javid is believed to have quit the position after refusing to sack his team of advisers.

It has been widely reported that adviser to No 10 Dominic Cummings and the Prime Minister wish to exert greater control over the Treasury, but the changeover has come as a shock with only four weeks left until the Spring Budget has been scheduled to take place on March 11.

Political pundits suggest that Sunak is being rewarded for his loyalty to Johnson and Cummings, while others like Javid are being punished for not falling in line.

As a result, commentators are anticipating that there could be more populist giveaways in the upcoming Budget than might have been the case had Javid remained in post.

Javid’s departure will make him the shortest-serving Chancellor since the Second World War, with the exception of Conservative politician Iain Macleod who died in office in 1970.

Sunak, who is married with two daughters, has been MP for Richmond in Yorkshire since 2015.

A Brexiteer, Sunak became chief secretary to the Treasury in July when Javid was appointed Chancellor.

Prior to joining the Treasury, Sunak was parliamentary under secretary of state at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from January 2018 and before that parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from June 2017.

In his career before politics, Sunak worked at Goldman Sachs and later co-founded an investment firm.

Sunak was born in Southampton 1980 and studied at exclusive private school Winchester College.

His parents emigrated to the UK from India with his grandparents, with his father later becoming a GP and his mother running a chemist shop.

He later read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford before taking an MBA at Stanford University on a Fullbright scholarship.

It was at Stanford that Sunak met his wife Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire and co-founder of Infosys Infosys Narayana Murthy.

On Sunak’s website he boasts of having worked with companies “from Silicon Valley to Bangalore” as well as helping at his mother’s  “tiny chemist shop”.

On website he  says he has “seen first-hand how politicians should support free enterprise and innovation to ensure our future prosperity” and expresses gratitude to his parents who “sacrificed a great deal so I could attend good schools”.

He lists his interests as “keeping fit, cricket, football and movies”.