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, and it has not harmed him electorally. But elitism that can be rationalised away in easier times becomes hard to ignore in times of economic crisis, just as Sunak’s extreme wealth feels uniquely alien even to comfortably off voters. Besides, extreme wealth has a habit of bringing up other issues the public cares about – namely how you came to have it, including adopting questionable tax arrangements.
The pictures of Sunak last month struggling to use a card machine to pay for some petrol, and the report that the “average car” he used in a photo op had to be borrowed from a supermarket worker, did not gain traction just because they were a funny sideshow, but because they go to the heart of a question that feels suddenly relevant. Does the man in charge of the country’s finances as prices soar understand the problems facing my family? As one of his constituents put it to the Guardian: “The cost of everything is going up. It costs me £30 a week to drive to work now – that’s three hours wages for me. Sunak hasn’t got a clue.”
Those who lament that critics are obsessed with Sunak’s money miss the point. It is not Sunak’s family’s wealth per se that most people object to – it’s what he chooses to do with it, be it limiting the amount of tax his family pays or using his privilege to make other families poorer. His mini budget last month was remarkable even by Tory standards in its indifference in tackling even the edges of the suffering facing much of the public. This failure was only exacerbated by Sunak’s quip that his household “all have different breads” while other families worried about needing a food bank. Overnight, the man who rode high throughout the pandemic with “eat out to help out” may as well have been opining, “eat less to help the bills out”.
The thing about entitlement is that Sunak – highly ambitious and previously praised for his slick PR – is not even trying to hide it. Just days after he refused to bring benefit rates in line with inflation to protect children from going hungry, he publicly donated £100,000 to his old private school. Sunak has similarly gone on the offensive in recent days, finding the nerve to spin his current troubles as a leftwing attempt to “smear my wife”. Tellingly, he turned to the Sun – itself a tax-minimising entity owned by a billionaire – to blame Labour for his problems. The rich really do protect their own.
If Sunak appears like a man who thinks he’s untouchable, it may be because he typically would be. It is notoriously difficult to have a real discussion about inequality or excess wealth in Britain. As Matthew Parris put it for the Times this weekend, “Wealth envy shouldn’t bar Sunak from No 10.” This narrative has long worked: as I have written before, focus groups show that voters can be hostile to what they perceive as “attacks on people who have done well”. But just like political careers, opinions that once rode high can sink if conditions change. YouGov polling shows that Sunak’s popularity fell by 24 points after the spring statement, and that was before news broke of his family’s use of a tax haven and green card. Much like Partygate, when it comes to tax voters do not take kindly to the feeling of “one rule for them, another one for us”.
Protests about living standards have already been held across the country this month, and it’s not hard to imagine the chancellor’s image gracing placards in the coming months. These are the trials that come with money and power. Sunak may well end up as the face of Britain’s cost of living crisis – just not in the way he intended.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: The cost of living crisis
Join Hugh Muir, Larry Elliott and Anneliese Dodds MP in a livestreamed event on the cost of living crisis and the effect on the poorest households, on Thursday 14 April 2022, 8pm BST | 9pm CEST | 12pm PDT | 3pm EDT
