Thailand’s Anutin Charnvirakul was elected prime minister on Friday after breezing through a parliamentary vote, trouncing the candidate of the Shinawatra family’s once-dominant ruling party to end a week of chaos and political deadlock.

With decisive opposition backing, Anutin easily passed the threshold of more than half of the lower house votes required to become premier, capping off days of drama and a scramble for power during which he outmanoeuvred the most successful political party in Thailand’s history.

Shrewd dealmaker Anutin has been a mainstay in Thai politics throughout years of turmoil, positioning his Bhumjaithai party strategically between warring elites embroiled in an intractable power struggle and guaranteeing its place in a succession of coalition governments.

His rout of rival contender Chaikasem Nitisiri was a humiliation for the ruling Pheu Thai party, the once unstoppable populist juggernaut of influential billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, who left Thailand late on Thursday for Dubai, where he spent the bulk of his 15 years in self-imposed exile.

Anutin led from the start and won 63% of the votes, with double the tally of Chaikasem.

He was mobbed by a phalanx of media as he left the chamber, his aides fending off a scrum of journalists who jostled and shouted as he edged slowly towards a waiting car.

“I will work my hardest, every day, no holidays, because there is not a lot of time,” Anutin said, his face lit up by bursts of camera flashes.

“We have to ease problems quickly.”

Pheu Thai’s crisis was triggered in June by Anutin’s withdrawal from its alliance, which left the coalition government clinging to power with a razor-thin majority amid protests and plummeting popularity.

The hammer blow was last week’s dismissal by a court of Thaksin’s daughter and protege Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the sixth prime minister from or backed by the Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or judiciary.

Anutin’s victory came as a result of a pact with the progressive opposition People’s Party, the largest force in parliament, which he seduced with promises to hold a referendum on amending the constitution and call an election within four months.

‘We will return’

A political veteran and son of a former cabinet minister who once ran his family’s construction firm, 58-year-old Anutin is a former deputy premier, interior minister and health minister who served as Thailand’s COVID-19 tsar.

As a staunch royalist, Anutin is considered a conservative, although he made a name for himself by leading a successful campaign to decriminalise cannabis in Thailand, which led to an explosion of thousands of marijuana retailers.

Anutin will lead a minority government, which the People’s Party will not join, and take the helm of a country with an economy struggling from weak consumption, tight lending and soaring levels of household debt.

His expedited rise to the premiership was tied to the political reckoning of powerbroker Thaksin and decline of Pheu Thai, which won five of the past six elections but has haemorrhaged support among the working classes once wooed by its raft of populist giveaways.

Despite the heavy defeat, Pheu Thai vowed to come back to power and deliver on its agenda.

“We will return to finish the job for all the Thai people,” it said.

Thaksin’s unannounced departure from Thailand on his private jet came after his party failed in desperate bids to dissolve the house and undermine Anutin’s bloc. A court ruling that could see Thaksin jailed is set for next week.

The tycoon made a vaunted homecoming from Dubai in 2023 to serve an eight-year sentence for abuse of power and conflicts of interest, but on his first night in prison he was transferred to the VIP wing of a hospital on medical grounds.

His sentence was commuted to a year by the king and he was released on parole after six months in detention. The Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday if Thaksin’s hospital stint counts as time served. If not, it could send him back to jail.

In a post on X, Thaksin said he was in Dubai for a medical checkup and to see old friends.

“I will be back in Thailand by September 8 to personally attend court,” he said.

• Rayner says she deeply regrets tax mistake.
• Starmer sad to lose “trusted colleague and a true friend”.
• Rayner ruled to have broken the ministerial code.

BIRMINGHAM: British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner resigned on Friday after saying she deeply regretted her mistake of underpaying property tax on a new home, in a damaging blow for her boss, Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

After Britain’s independent adviser ruled that she had breached the ministerial code by failing to pay the correct tax, there was little Starmer could do to protect his deputy, saying he was “very sad to be losing you from the government”, describing her as a “trusted colleague and a true friend”.

Rayner, 45, is the eighth, and the most senior, ministerial departure from Starmer’s team, and the most damaging yet after the British leader offered her his full support when she was first accused of avoiding 40,000 pounds ($54,000) in tax on the transaction.

Starmer has now suffered the most ministerial resignations, outside government reshuffles, of any prime minister at the beginning of their tenure in almost 50 years — more even than Boris Johnson in his chaotic period in office.

“I deeply regret my decision to not seek additional specialist tax advice … I take full responsibility for this error,” she said in her letter to Starmer.

“Given the findings, and the impact on my family, I have therefore decided to resign,” said Rayner, who also stepped down as a minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party.

In a particularly emotional letter, Starmer said he believed she had made the right decision but understood it was one “which I know is very painful for you”.

“On a personal note, I am very sad to be losing you from the government … Even though you won’t be part of the government, you will remain a major figure in our party.”

The independent adviser on ministerial standards ruled Rayner had broken the code because she had failed to heed the warning within the legal advice – which she said she had relied on – to seek expert advice on her complicated financial situation.

“It is with deep regret that I must advise you that in these circumstances, I consider the Code to have been breached,” he said, referring to rules to make sure the conduct of politicians meet the standards of public service.

Reform celebrates

With Labour trailing Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK in the polls, Starmer faces difficult state spending and tax choices as he seeks to repair his party’s image after accusations of hypocrisy by critics over accepting expensive items including clothing and concert tickets from donors.

On the first day of Reform’s party conference in the central English city of Birmingham, Farage brought forward his speech by three hours to address Rayner’s resignation.

Farage said the Labour government was in “deep crisis” and the next election may take place in 2027, implying that Labour, who hold a big majority, might call one early for fear its support was slipping.

“Despite all the promises that this would be a new, different type of politics, is as bad, if not worse, than the one that went before,” he told the audience to loud applause.

For Starmer, losing his deputy is particularly damaging, especially as Rayner – once a working-class teenage mother – had been able to mediate between Labour’s left and centrist wings to keep the party united, and had a wider appeal than Starmer.

“Any resignation is a blow, especially Ange (Rayner), but she clearly had to go,” said one Labour lawmaker, adding she would probably stay quiet for a while but could, at a later date, try to mount a challenge against Starmer.

Rayner had been forced to refer herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards on Wednesday after admitting that she had made a mistake over the tax payment.

In an interview in which she appeared close to tears, she described setting up a trust for one of her sons, who has lifelong disabilities as a result of an injury.

It was to that trust that she sold her share of her family home in northern England to pay for an apartment in the southern English seaside resort of Hove, believing she would not have to pay the higher rate of tax charged when buying a second home.

After starting to take further legal advice last week, a day after the allegations first surfaced, she then said on Wednesday she had made a mistake and was taking steps to pay the additional tax.

Continuing its trend of blocking social media accounts, the Indian government has blocked the account of Austrian economist Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn for sharing a Khalistan map and calling for the dismantling of New Delhi.

NDTV reported that the account was blocked in response to a controversial message, stating: “I call to dismantle India into ExIndia. Narendra Modi is Russia’s man. We need friends of freedom for Khalistan Network.”

Under the umbrella of the Khalistan movement, the Sikh separatists are seeking an independent state for the religious minority, as they considered themselves under a security threat.

The map shared by Fehlinger-Jahn showed a separate region of India for Sikhs.

According to NDTV’s report: “India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology flagged the viral post and directed X to withhold access to the account for Indian users. The account has since been disabled in India.”

In response, the economist shared another post, stating: “I call for ExIndia. India is now a hostile state to the Free World. We must boycott India now!”

According to Fehlinger-Jahn’s Linkedin handle, he severse as the president of the Austrian Committee for NATO Membership of Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Austria.

He is also a part of the Board of the Action Group for Regional Economic Integration of Southern Balkans.