‘It’s the inauthenticity’: has Rishi Sunak blown his No 10 chance?
There has been an uneasy consensus among Conservative MPs that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has meant Boris Johnson is saved from a leadership challenge.
But there is also a whispered agreement that there is another factor keeping Johnson in No 10 – the fast disintegration of Rishi Sunak’s reputation as a viable alternative.
Tory MPs who spoke to the Guardian said they believed his chances of becoming prime minister were now minimal.
“His stock has fallen considerably. I don’t think that he is a contender now. I’m not sure he ever really was,” one key Johnson critic said.
Some Tories are prepared to robustly defend the chancellor over the revelations that his wife, Akshata Murty, has non-domiciled tax status, which makes it unclear what tax – if any – she has paid on £11.5m in annual dividends from a stake in her family’s IT business empire, Infosys.
One said it was “deeply pathetic” to go after family members. The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Johnson himself defended Murty, who on Friday night announced she would now pay UK taxes, on the airwaves.
However, the chancellor’s relationship with No 10 is fractured, despite Johnson being more supportive in public over the tax furore than Sunak was over the prime minister’s Partygate scandal.
And those tensions erupted on Thursday night as an ally of Sunak accused those around Johnson of being responsible for the leak of Murty’s tax status – something No 10 and No 11 deny on the record.
Privately, MPs concede that the revelations could be damaging. But they also point to instances such as Sunak’s photo opportunity with a Kia Rio, his quip that his household “all have different breads” and his £100,000 donation to Winchester college as more cringeworthy.
Sunak, with his
Read more on theguardian.com
