Life after power: what do our former PMs do all day?

Rishi Sunak, who is only 45, has said he will give his salary from Goldman Sachs to charity.

- JOHN RENTOUL

As the richest MP to become prime minister since Earl Derby in the 1850s, he can afford to do so, but in fact no recent prime minister has needed the money, and all of them have tried in other ways to remain relevant.

Sunak seems less desperate than most of his predecessors to make a mark in his post-prime-ministerial career - and it should be noted that, despite persistent speculation when he was in No 10 that he would be off to California the moment the election was over, he is still here.

Other recent prime ministers have tried harder to keep their hand on the steering wheel after leaving office...

Margaret Thatcher: divisive icon

A book to be published next week by Peter Just, Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street, claims that she enjoyed “perhaps one of the most consequential political afterlives in British history”.

Her afterlife, however, was mostly the afterburn of her ideologically driven premiership and the way she was deposed, which created an instant myth of betrayal and divided the Conservative Party, increasingly on the issue of Europe, for two decades.

She did not take on other jobs after she left No 10, partly because she was already of retirement age, leaving office at the age of 65. She became the first prime minister to set up a foundation, funded by admirers who wanted to perpetuate her legacy. The Thatcher Foundation’s online archive is one of the best historical resources of the period.

John Major: national treasure (eventually)

John Major went off to watch cricket on the day he left office, and took a number of well-paid directorships. He kept a low profile for many years, apart from a role as guardian to Princes William and Harry after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.