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Rishi Sunak
Early Life
Claims to come from relatively humble beginnings and worked in his parents’ pharmacy.
But clearly had a privileged upbringing as he attended Winchester college, a £30k per year private school.
Attended the University of Oxford and then Stanford University in the USA.
Doesn’t have any working class friends growing up, meaning his network are exclusively rich people.
Pre - Political Career
Worked in investment banking and with hedge funds. As this Guardian article says “[investment banker] primary aim is to make profits from [financial markets], regardless of how it affects the real economy, the national interest or employees. If that means shorting the pound or breaking up a successful company for quick profits, then so be it.”
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He has never run a business, he's never created anything. He is not an entrepreneur. He made a lot of money moving money from one place to another.
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As an investment banker, here’s what he was up to in 2008:
Sunak was a founding partner of hedge fund Theleme Partners which is registered in the tax haven the Cayman Islands. He left the fund in 2013, and while we do not know if Sunak still has shares in this fund, it would be usual to retain a stake and it is suspected he still has contacts with the firm. This potentially could be a conflict of interest, as will be discussed later.
Political Career
Sunak was elected as an MP in 2015.
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Became Chancellor in 2020. He oversaw the financial management of the COVID pandemic, including rolling out the furlough scheme. Despite being considered a "handout" to ordinary people, this time seen the biggest transfer of wealth from poorest to richest in history.
During Covid, Sunak championed the Eat Out to Help Out, which was a failure.
Despite Sunak’s poor judgement, he still thinks experts had too much power over COVID lockdowns.
Race to be PM
The video below shows Sunak boasting about taking money out of poorer urban areas and giving it to richer areas.
He thought Darlington was in Scotland
Becoming Prime Minister
Became PM after running unopposed following the six-week tenure of his predecessor Liz Truss.
He became the first Prime Minister to have formerly been an investment banker.
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Sunak is the first politician since records began in 2009 that has a blind trust on his register of political interest. It is suspected it could be related to the Theleme hedge fund Sunak left in 2013. This had $50 million invested in biotech firm Moderna, which were among the first producers of Covid-19 vaccines. This led their share price to skyrocket. Rishi Sunak, who was Chancellor when the Moderna vaccine was approved, has refused to say whether he financially benefitted from the rising share price.
The problem with being really rich
Sunak is worth over £700 million, making him one of the richest MPs and the richest ever Prime Minister.
He's so rich that he used his own money to upgrade the local electricity network so he could heat his mansion's private swimming pool (even as many surrounding public pools had to restrict access due to energy costs).
However, not everyone thinks being so out-of-touch rich is a bad thing.
It would be pretty hard to aspire to be born into a family that can afford to send you to an elite private school. It’s not exactly aspirational to marry the offspring of a billionaire. As we've explored in The Super-Wealthy section, it is misjudged to aspire to this level of wealth as it’s virtually impossible to achieve it if you were not wealthy to begin with, and were afforded opportunities the rest of us wouldn’t have due to your lucky start in life.
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The obscene wealth of Sunak makes it not only difficult for him to relate to the struggles of others, but makes it almost impossible for the public to buy into the policies he tries to push.
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It also makes him a massive hypocrite. When asked, he did not think it is “appropriate” to query him on his use of private healthcare. He has also justified being registered with a private GP, because the NHS gets a lot of money. But if he thinks the NHS is so well funded, why doesn’t he use it? His money allows him to insulate himself from the decisions he makes.
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Morality of Sunak's wealth notwithstanding, there has also been many questions about the suspect financial management of his £700 million+ fortune.
Philanthropic efforts
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The Sunak family have used their private wealth to give back to elite schools and universities they attended. In 2022, they donated £100,000 to Rishi's former elite private school Winchester College. They also have $3 million to Mrs Sunak's former Californian University for an entire computer lab- who were so grateful they even named the lab after them.
At the same time as giving out the above donations, a primary school in Sunak's Yorkshire constituency tried to raise £10,000 to buy computers for the students (eventually only reaching half of that goal). To help with fundraising efforts, Sunak donated a bottle of House of Commons red wine, signed by the Prime Minister himself. It was the cheapest bottle of offer in the shop, costing only a tenner.
Return of professionalism
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In his first days in office, he promised to restore professionalism and accountability. He didn't keep that promise for long and reinstated Suella Braverman as Home Secretary six days after being sacked by Liz Truss for leaking sensitive information to political allies.
He also promoted both Gavin Williamson and Domonic Raab into Cabinet even though he refused to deny he knew about bullying allegations against both of these men
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Not long into his tenure, he endured yet another in a long line of PR disasters (more of which we'll get to later) where he became the second Prime Minister, after Boris Johnson, to receive a fine from the police while in office. In January 2023, he filmed himself in a moving car while not wearing a seat belt. While more of an embarrassing blunder than resignation-demanding scandal, it does highlight what a naïve political liability he is.
Missing in action
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When Sunak became Prime Minister he inherited many issues including: cost of living crisis, waves of strike action and corruption/sleaze allegations within the Conservative party. None of which he has handled well.
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With regards to the strike action, Sunak seems reluctant to engage with or negotiate with trade unions in good faith. The British Medical Association have went as far to say Sunak is making the "choice" to allow up to 500 patients to die unnecessarily each week.
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Sunak has also been slow to discipline members of his own party. In January 2023, when it emerged former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi had been dishonest about his tax affairs, Sunak initially defended him, and took two weeks to sack him from post. Sunak has also allowed deputy Prime Minister to remain in post while being investigated for 24 counts of bullying accusations.
Climate Criminal
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Sunak does not seem to care about the impending climate catastrophe. But he does care about making his network a lot of money
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His disregard for the climate extends to his personal life, going by the frequency he uses private jets. Sunak as Prime Minister flies by private jet once every eight days, more than any other recent prime minister. This is not only environmentally the worst way to travel, it is also expensive. As well as using taxpayer money, Suank has also taken £70,000 from Conservative party donors to fund private jet and helicopter flights in 2023 to attend private events.
Personal Life
Image Issues
Sunak had a number of PR disasters while Chancellor, which probably explains why he spent £500,000 of taxpayer cash on focus groups to repair his image.
It looks like he can’t work a credit card.
In the same PR nightmare, he used someone else’s car (a Kia) at a petrol pump. But at least he paid for the petrol, even if he didn’t fill the car all the way up.
Then, in his campaign to become Prime Minister, he went to McDonalds, and pretended to use a card to pay for his food, even though it was already paid for.
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While Sunak may not be familiar with how a credit card works, he knows how to get a Green Card. He held permanent resident status for the US from the 2000s until 2021, including a period where he was Chancellor.
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Here's some other videos of Sunak being uncharismatic.
He's not much better at pre-recorded pieces to camera
His wife
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A lot of Sunak’s wealth comes from his wife, who has/stands to inherit it from her billionaire dad.
Sunak argues that his wife’s personal and business affairs should be off limits to the media, but it contributes to his family’s and his own wealth. Her own financial interests could also affect decisions he makes as Prime Minister.
His wife avoided tax by claiming “non-dom” status, i.e she doesn’t live here and therefore doesn’t need to pay tax on foreign earnings. However, the worst part about this story is Sunak’s excuses to hide the truth. He lied about what “non-dom” status actually is claiming that she not should be expected to give up her Indian citizenship just because she is married to him. In reality, non-dom status is a tax arrangement (which you need to pay the HMRC £30,000 per year to maintain) and is not linked to citizenship in any way- something that the person in charge of the treasury would well know. Sunak deliberately misrepresented the facts to avoid justifiable criticism. Besides, how can the wife of a Chancellor of a country claim she doesn't live in that country and expect to get away with it?
Murty owns shares in Infosys, a company her dad set up. It maintained operations in Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, against the advice that Sunak gave that everyone should abandon dealings with Russia. His family were therefore accused of supporting Putin’s regime.
Murty and her dad were awarded hundreds of thousands of pounds of COVID furlough cash and other relief, despite their extreme wealth. Which begs the question: how you can be a non-dom to avoid tax, yet still receive a Covid loan form the UK Government?
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While Chancellor during the Covid pandemic, Sunak launched Future Fund, an initiative to support startups. This invested nearly £2 million in companies linked to Murty.
Murty just generally seems to be really lucky, and in a position to make money from tax breaks and financially benefitting from decisions the Government makes.
His friends
It’s a very strange thing to say when nothing could be further from the truth, as we have shown. Does it have anything to do with the fact that Katy Balls' boss at the time, James Forsyth, is Sunak’s best mate and was best man at his wedding?
Exit Strategy
Polling for the Conservative Party throughout 2023 suggests that they will not win another term in Government.
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It seems Rishi Sunak knows this, and is using his position as Prime Minister to network into his next career move. For example, this summit on AI in which he interviews the world's richest grifter, Elon Musk.
How does Sunak vote?
On supporting the rich and powerful
Generally Supports tax cuts for banks
Supports reducing capital gains tax
Supports bankers taking home bigger bonuses
Supports very high-earners (£150,000+ salary) paying less tax
Supports big business paying less tax on profits
Opposes tackling tax evasion , 2
On supporting the 99.9%
Opposes spending on welfare benefits
Opposes keeping welfare benefits in line with prices
Opposes the ability for trade unions to stand up for workers’ rights
Opposes keeping the NHS in public hands
On the environment
Opposes funding for renewable energy
Opposes taking action to prevent climate change
On human rights
Supports gay marriage
Opposes laws that support equality and human rights
Supports making life harder for asylum seekers in the UK
Supports stricter immigration controls