Rishi Sunak may well be measured on terms determined by a former Prime Minister - Kit Thompson

The new Prime Minister will, proclaimed Theresa May, provide the sort of ‘calm, competent, pragmatic leadership our country needs at this deeply challenging time’.

In his first statement on winning the Conservative MPs' ballot following the withdrawal of first Boris Johnson and then Penny Mordaunt, Sunak set out his priorities – to ‘fix’ the economy, bring his party together, to stand and ‘deliver’.

The first two may be seen as quantifiable data, the second may be seen in terms of persuasion. Each is rooted in terms of balance of evidence – remunerative, party political, community-based and multinational – and none will be easy to achieve.

He must move quickly but carefully to calm the markets and reassure allies that Britain has woken up and grown up aware of the serious political consequences if it all goes wrong. Prime Minister Sunak may yet be seen as disingenuous. To have one's plans cause trouble for others is to be hoist by one's own petard.

The burden of his first one hundred days in office is the polar opposite of what is routinely envisioned of global leaders.

He would be well counselled to steer clear of grandiloquent flourishes, surprise announcements, and ideas of 'disruptive innovators’, diatribes against consumerism; a constant tale of woe told by his two direct predecessors – a short-burst breathless Liz Truss and Boris’s Johnsonian flowery speeches.

A week is a long time in politics, said Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain in 1886: 'In politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight .... A lot of change can happen in a short space of time.'

There will be hard times for Prime Minister Sunak in the road ahead if he is to restore the United Kingdom's integrity, its foreign policy, and its Anglo-Saxon sense of pragmatism.

The sheer range of political affairs confronting Rishi Sunak, as the new PM, involve looking again at energy costs, climate change, the war in Ukraine, the People’s Republic of China, and Indo-Pacific region. Africa, the United States, world-wide health concerns, international law and security will be next.

The range of domestic and foreign policy issues facing Rishi Sunak as he prepares to lead the UK government cannot be ducked.

The cost of energy continues to be a serious concern for households and businesses and, given the cost of intervening, will eliminate any residual government funding. The policy currently in place of capping the unit price for six months increases affordability but will offer only a token relief package for this winter. Crucially the new government needs to look again at what happens to bills in the spring and next winter which, from a perspective of gas supplies, may well be worse than this one.

The EU has reacted with a sense of concerted resolve, proposing new legislative packages to diversify supply, quicken the deployment of renewable energy, make changes to markets, and bring in energy saving measures.

While these are unlikely to be enough in themselves they could bridge a gap and become a gauge for UK domestic policy to be measured.

Kit Thompson is a Fellow of Clare Hall Cambridge and Associate in Cambridge.