Sunak’s wealth is not the only problem – it’s how he uses his privilege to make others poorer
Politics is in many ways a game of contrasts. Just days after the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s controversial national insurance hike kicked in this month, it emerged that his multimillionaire wife, Akshata Murty, has been using non-domicile status to potentially avoid paying tens of millions of pounds in tax, while Sunak himself had a US green card while he was chancellor of the exchequer. Murty has now said she will pay tax in the UK on her worldwide income after pressure, but the message from the chancellor is clear: tax is very much for ordinary people.
That the Sunak family are said to have sacrificed their trip to their California home this Easter in order to lay low in their Yorkshire mansion (soon to have a swimming pool and tennis court) is hardly better optics. While the chancellor chooses between homes to relax in, the anxious British public are turning off the heating and putting on another jumper.
This growing story is about ethics and accountability, and the delicate matter of when a politician’s family becomes fair game (clue: when it involves HMRC and you are the one that sets tax policy). Following pressure from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Sunak has requested an independent review of all his declarations since becoming a minister. And yet, in a nation grappling with plummeting living standards, the storm also brings home the perverse reality this country is facing: the worst cost of living crisis in a generation is being overseen by a chancellor whose wife is richer than the Queen.
It is hardly a new phenomenon for Britain to be ruled by the wealthy. It is practically in our democracy’s DNA; just look at Eton’s direct tunnel to No 10. It’s not as if Boris Johnson has ever appeared a man of the people,
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