Polling companies often ask voters to pick a description from a list of phrases that they most associate with political leaders. When YouGov did this for Rishi Sunak in late March, the words people thought best characterised the prime minister was “out of touch”. This is hardly surprising. The family fortune is so big that he and his wife, Akshata Murty, appear on the Sunday Times rich list. He can not only afford a private swimming pool but also to pay to upgrade the local electricity grid to heat it. But the news that the prime minister is being investigated by the Commons standards watchdog over a failure to declare his wife’s interest in a childcare business that may benefit from his government’s budget is about more than mere wealth. It suggests that Mr Sunak is not just aloof but he thinks that the rules don’t apply to him.
Mr Sunak knows how toxic that charge can be – as it helped end Boris Johnson’s stint in Downing Street. The prime minister might dismiss the comparison. He says he did register his wife’s shares in Koru Kids, a private childminding agency that is taking part in a government pilot, with the Cabinet Office. The trouble is a statement of ministers’ interests has yet to be published. There are thus no public records available that Mr Sunak has registered his wife’s commercial interests.
He also failed to declare an interest when prompted during his appearance in front of the parliamentary liaison committee last month. On the face of it, this seems to breach parliament’s code of conduct, which states: “Members must always be open and frank in declaring any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its committees.”
One might ask whether this parliamentary dust-up will be on the electorate’s radar. Mr Sunak has been, understandably, protective of his spouse, Ms Murty. But this has clouded his judgment. When it emerged that Ms Murty, who holds £600m worth of shares in her father’s IT company, Infosys, had avoided tax in Britain to the tune of £20m by registering as non-domiciled, her husband dismissed the stories as a political smear. Ms Murty later agreed to pay tax on her foreign income.
The episode was revealing for the message that the couple’s choice sent about inequality and unfairness in Britain today. This impression was reinforced last summer when Mr Sunak was caught on camera explaining at a hustings that what “levelling up” was doing was diverting money away from poorer areas and towards some of the wealthiest parts of England, to benefit people like the Tory supporters in Tunbridge Wells whom he was speaking to.
Mr Sunak likes to present himself as a self-made meritocrat rather than an expensively educated banker with little experience outside the rarefied worlds of finance and politics. But voters have ways of filtering the signal from the noise of political theatre. They are sensitive to the idea that there is one rule for the rich and another for the rest of us. That is why it is important to be transparent about Ms Murty’s shares in a childcare company when its executives are being hosted in Downing Street. Parliament’s code of conduct is meant to inspire voter confidence that individuals and businesses are not using privileged access to get special treatment. The electorate often sees the Tories as the party of the rich, for the rich. By not coming clean straight away, Mr Sunak will have cemented that view.
