Rishi Sunak: People are obsessed with his height, here's how tall the Prime Minister is

If Rishi Sunak looks tall to you, you may have fallen for the PM’s PR technologists’ tricks. As people joke, nothing is as it seems in Westminster.

At first, heated discussions about top politician's below-average height set the Internet on fire the week he became the new PM, with Google searches into this particular characteristic rising sharply.

But several months into Rishi Sunak’s residence in Downing Street’s VIP flat, some people felt disappointed - not as much about his policies or his size from bottom to the top but in him seemingly refusing to ‘own’ his actual height and instead resorting to photography tricks to disguise it.

Here’s how tall Rishi Sunak really is and how he seems to feel about it.

How tall is Rishi Sunak?

Moving into Downing Street's top flat, Rishi Sunak became the wealthiest UK prime minister to date, but it’s not this fact that people became obsessed with.

His height was what interested the nation more than his billionaire wife or his alleged ‘humble’ upbringing.

Being 5’ 6’’ / 170cm tall, Rishi Sunak is 2 inches / 5cm shorter than the average adult man in Britain which is 5’10’’, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The PM is slightly taller than his wife Akshata Murthy who is said to be 5’4’’ / 163cm.

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The shortest and tallest PMs

University of St Andrews’s recent research found that men’s height is linked to the perception of their masculinity.

Another study showed that6’3” / 192cm or 6’4”/ 195cm men were likely to get 60% more messages on dating sites than the ones 5’7”/173cm or 5’8’’ / 176cm tall.

Luckily, Rishi Sunak is not the only politician of below-average height in the world political arena at the moment. The likes of Volodymyr Zelenskyy - with his decisive response to Russia’s and its not-too-tall leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine - are clearly changing the tide for shorter men and their image.

Dissecting the issue of the PM’s height, the national press turned to some high-profile examples from Hollywood as Sophie Turner and Zendayanever seem to look down on their partnersJoe Jonas and Spider-Man’s Tom Holland.

Also, looking back at British history, Rishi Sunak can hardly feel bad about his height as Winston Churchill was the same ‘modest’ 5'6''.

Here is why Rishi Sunak ‘killed the era of the short king’

Still a chancellor in March 2021, Rishi Sunak reportedly positioned himself at the top of the stairs of No 11 Downing Street, forcing other Treasury ministers to stand on the steps below him so that they looked smaller than their boss.

Some believe that resorting to photography tricks and ‘boxes discreetly concealed behind lecterns’ by Rishi Sunak ‘killed the era of the short king’ as he ‘has refused to own’ his height, rather than embracing it.

London journalist Imogen West-Knights wrote in GQ Magazine:

Sunak has betrayed short men.

The reason Rishi has killed the era of the short king isn’t that he’s short and awful – although he is both. It’s because he has refused to own it.

Short men should be outraged at Sunak, who has spent his whole time in the political limelight trying desperately to distance himself from their ranks.

Read more:

⋙ Rishi Sunak: Schoolgirl asks how he can help struggling families given he is ‘rich’, this was his reply

⋙ Rishi Sunak: These are the consequences he could face if investigation finds he broke the rules

Sources used:

- HuffPost: 'Want To Know Rishi Sunak's Height? So Does Everyone, Apparently'

- Independent: 'Why are people so obsessed with Rishi Sunak’s height?'