Rishi Sunak is having a tough week. The millionaire has to pay a fine for breaking lockdown rules, and his even richer wife is going to have to pay some tax on her income. Boohoo! Learn more in the first of our ‘Meet the Tories’ series: Who is Rishi Sunak?
Video transcript
Rishi Sunak’s everywhere these days, from announcing budgets, to his countless photo-ops. But behind the wide smiles and polished look, a much more sinister and calculating individual can be identified.
The first and most striking fact about our current chancellor is that he’s rich – and we mean really rich. For context, he’s actually the richest member of the House of Commons. And for more context, here is just one of Sunak’s four luxury properties – a striking £1.5m mansion located in Yorkshire. Estimates put his wealth at around £200m – so, just where does all his wealth come from?
Rishi was born in 1980 to ‘well to do’ parents – his dad, a general practitioner, and his mother, manager of a local pharmacy. But it was while obtaining his MBA at Stanford University that he met his future wife – billionaire Akshata Murthy – daughter of Indian Billionaire Narayana Murthy.
This opened many doors for Sunak, and he even went on to work as a director of his father’s in law’s company ‘Catamaran Ventures’. Aside from this, however, he’s worked for some of the world’s largest and most profitable banks, including the notorious Goldman Sachs. Sunak also worked for the hedge fund ‘The Children’s Investment Fund Management’. The hedge fund is known for launching a campaign that bet against a major Dutch Bank – ABN Amro. This point is crucial because this bet eventually led to the company’s instability, leading to its sale to the Royal Bank of Scotland – which ultimately started the chain of events that lead to the financial crash of 2008.
But aside from his own personal dealings, his billionaire wife’s finances have recently come under close scrutiny.
Akshata Murthy was widely criticised after being exposed for claiming non-domicile status on dividend payments she received from her father’s tech company, Infosys. Her stake in the company brought her over £10m last year – from which she paid no UK taxes. Only after massive public backlash was she pressured to drop this status and pay UK taxes on this income.
While Rishi has shamelessly hiked taxes on millions of working people, and voted in measures that have reduced benefits for the most vulnerable – he lives in a completely different world. A world of luxury, wealth, and privilege.
So the next time you hear Rishi claiming he understands the pain of working people, or that he empathises with the families facing an unprecedented cost of living crisis, show them this video so that they understand – this is class war, plain and simple.
Featured image: HM treasury/flickr
