politics

Rishi Sunak is a terrible bloke

Published 16:07 7 Apr 2022 BST

Updated 11:34 8 Apr 2022 BST

Ed Campbell

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Fishy Rishi is a bad boy

Rishi Sunak is the man most likely to be our next prime minister. Just kidding. While the rest of the country is weighing up if they can save on heating costs by putting their head in the oven, the chancellor has swanned off to his £5m house in Santa Monica. The man responsible for tackling the cost of living crisis is taking a well-deserved break in a house with a pet spa. Whatever that is.

Sunak has had an almost unparalleled fall from grace, suffering a public wrath usually reserved for Love Island contestants and immigrants. The BBC photoshopped him into superman for god’s sake and now he’s a byword for Tory cruelty. His approval ratings have fallen a staggering 38 points since 2020, going from being one of the most popular chancellors in memory to radicalising money-saving expert Martin Lewis. So, how did the Oxbridge-educated public schoolboy who worked for a hedge fund get so out of touch? The story starts, like all good villain narrative arcs, in the City of London. You won’t find much about this on Sunak’s website, dear reader, but after stints at £40,000 a year Winchester College, Oxford, and then Goldman Sachs, the chancellor worked at TCI. TCI is a hedge fund that played a significant role in the collapse of RBS. I won’t get into the details, I’ll just encourage you to revisit Margot Robbie’s bath scene in The Big Short. Sunak and a TCI colleague went on to found their own hedge fund. That colleague was landed with an £8m tax avoidance bill. The chancellor has denied any involvement in this matter, or the TCI scheme. The point is, he’s a born to rule Lord of the Manor. And despite what you might have heard about the collapse of feudalism in your history lessons - we are all still very much living on his estate. In fact, we never left. You could see Sunak’s mask slipping when he was challenged about his wife’s continued involvement in Infosys, a company operating in Russia. Sunak had called for investors to divest from Russia but said he was surprised he didn’t go all “Will Smith” on the people criticising his wife for profiting from Putin’s regime. And now he's overseeing a cost of living crisis that it's estimated will push 1.3m people into absolute poverty. Skyrocketing energy prices are about to make households £1,000 worse off a year. And what is Sunak doing about this? He’s not taxing the energy companies that have recorded "bumper profits" and have "more money than they know what to do with" to offset the prices. He’s loaning every household just £200 that they’re obliged to pay back in the next five years. It might actually be more cost-effective to burn the £200 instead of turning the radiator on. The chancellor has also devised a cunning plan that essentially taxes people for voting Labour. Sunak launched a scheme meaning that social care will be paid for by a rise in National Insurance. National Insurance is a tax on workers' earnings. People who work pay National Insurance but don’t need social care - and they largely voted for Labour in 2019. Whereas old people, who do need social care but don’t pay National Insurance, are more likely to vote Tory. Tory voters are no longer the slick city boys of the 80s that would have caved their own skull in if Mrs Thatcher asked. They’ve moved to the shires and will need their arses wiped for them in a few years. And they’d still cave their skull in if it would bring back Thatcher from the dead. Let’s go back to how fishy Rishi became dishy. When he wasn’t being fawned over for being conventionally attractive, the superhero chancellor sent the public’s hearts a flutter by launching the furlough scheme, where the government paid 80 per cent of people’s wages who otherwise would have had to be laid off. The government spent a huge £70 billion on this before it was abruptly ended in September 2021 to widespread concern. This was a hugely generous package but there was a real oversight. Three million people were simply excluded from government support, by virtue of various self-employment quirks. Old school Tory Sunak consistently claims that he’s a “low tax Conservative”, despite the public facing the largest tax burden for close to 100 years. While people confront the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, the UK is the only major economy actually increasing the tax burden on its citizens. For years, Sunak got to play politics on easy mode. He pursued massively popular schemes like furlough and eat out to help out. The country needed help and was welcome to receive it. This exposes the hollowness at the heart of fishy Rishi’s brand. Vulnerable people are making impossible choices between food and fuel, just so Sunak can role play Ayn Rand. To paraphrase Lord Farquaad, some of you may freeze but that’s a chance he’s willing to take.

And why’s he willing to take that chance? I hear a mansion is a pretty easy place to stay warm.