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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Politics
Reanna Smith

Rishi Sunak's privileged childhood with 'no working class friends' and wealthy parents

Rishi Sunak is going head-to-head with Liz Truss in a battle to become leader of the Conservative Party.

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer launched his leadership bid just 28 hours after Boris Johnson's resignation.

Sunak lives a life of luxury - he's married to Akshata Murthy, the heiress of a fortune worth billions, and the Sunday Times Rich List puts the couple's wealth at a staggering £730m.

Despite his lavish life now, Sunak and his supporters have claimed that he's come from a modest background.

Speaking to LBC about Sunak, Matt Hancock said: "He's not of privileged background at all, absolutely standard background."

Meanwhile, much of Sunak's leadership bid has centered around his family's humble beginnings after his parents migrated to the UK, and he's referred to himself as "professional middle class".

But while his supporters talked of Rishi's "humble" and "modest" background, a recent Channel 4 investigation has uncovered new details about his education, property and financial dealings that paint a very different picture.

A cabinet rival of Sunak's told Channel 4: "The posh boys have seized control of the party once again."

As he continues his leadership bid, here's everything you need to know about Rishi Sunak's upbringing.

Who are Rishi Sunak's parents?

Rishi Sunak is the eldest of three children and was born in 1980 in Southampton to parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak

His father was a GP and his mother was a pharmacist who went on to buy and run her own pharmacy in Southampton.

Rishi's father was born in Kenya and his mother was born in Tanzania, and both sets of Rishi's grandparents are Punjabi. His parents both migrated to the UK before starting a family together.

At the time of his birth, the family lived in Richmond Gardens in Portswood, but following the birth of his two younger siblings they moved to a six-bedroom home in Spindlewood Close, Bassett.

Where did Rishi Sunak go to school?

Rishi Sunak's parents (Yashvir, left and Usha, right) were a GP and pharmacy owner (Daily Echo/Solent News)
Rishi Sunak went to private Winchester College (BBC)

Rishi Sunak was entirely privately educated.

He attended Oakmount Preparatory School in Southampton until it closed in 1989.

Sunak then went on to study at Stroud School, King Edward VI Preparatory.

The fees at Stroud School currently start at £4,060 for nursery students and increase the older the child gets.

After leaving Stroud School in 1992, Sunak went on to study at one of the UK's most expensive schools - Winchester College.

Winchester College is a public school in Hampshire that educates around 700 boys from the ages of 13 to 18.

Last year, the school announced that it would be admitting girls for the first time into the sixth form.

The current fees to study at Winchester are £45,936 per year for boarders and £33,990 for day pupils.

Some of Sunak's supporters claimed he attended the elite school on a scholarship, but Sunak has confirmed to Channel 4 that he did not receive a scholarship and that his parents paid the fees.

Speaking about his time at Winchester in a documentary for the BBC in 2001, Rishi said: "At Winchester I was one of very few Asians, I mean the first generation into that level of society.

"It does put me in an elite of achievement definitely in society, but I'll always consider myself sort of, you know, professional middle class."

Sunak was made head boy in his final year and after leaving Winchester he went on to study at Lincoln College, Oxford.

After graduating from Oxford he got a scholarship to do an NBA at Stanford University and moved to Santa Monica with his new wife, billionaire heiress Akshata Murthy.

The couple lived in a beachfront apartment that they rented for $20,000 a month, around £13,000 at the time.

Rishi Sunak's privileged upbringing and parents' wealth

Rishi Sunak admitted he had no working class friends in a 2001 documentary (BBC)

His leadership campaign has spun a story of middle-class aspiration, but Sunak was recently branded "out of touch" after a clip from a 2001 BBC documentary titled Middle Classes: The Rise & Sprawl resurfaced.

In the clip, Sunak was shown talking about how he had no working class friends.

He said: "I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class."

But while his farther smirked on screen, Sunak went on to correct himself, saying: "Well not working class, but I mix and match."

In the same documentary, Sunak's parents claimed that paying Rishi's Winchester fees was "quite a large financial commitment" because they were double the fees of his school in Southampton.

Rishi has also said himself that his parents "sacrificed a great deal" to send him to Winchester.

But it appears that the family were pretty well off.

Channel 4 recently revealed that just a year after graduating from Oxford, Sunak purchased a one-bedroom flat in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea for £210,000 after getting a considerable amount of financial help from his parents.

Documents from the Land Registry showed that Rishi was able to purchase the property with an interest free loan of £105,000 from his parents - the loan was worth more than the average house price in Britain at the time.

Sunak still owns the flat and its now worth an estimated £750,000.

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