Rishi Sunak is being meme’d into oblivion this week after lamenting that he ‘went without’ Sky TV as a child, and sure enough the tabloids have now dug up photos of the house he grew up in and wouldn’t you know it – it’s a big property in a lovely cul-de-sac in Southampton.
It turns out Sunak’s parents moved to the property in 1981, a year after he was born. A floor plan for the house reveals that the master bedroom has an ensuite bathroom and walk-in wardrobe. Furthermore there are six bedrooms, a room that can either be used as a study or a gym, a double garage, and balconies at the front and back of the property. Not too shabby!
In an ITV interview earlier this week, Rishi Sunak was asked whether he understands the struggles facing ordinary families. Asked what he had gone without in his life he said “lots of things because my parents wanted to put everything into our education and that was a priority”.
When pressed to give an example he faffed around a bit before eventually saying: “All sorts of things like lots of people. There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have. Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually.”
Thanks to the cash they saved by skipping Sky TV, Rishi Sunak was able to attend one of the country’s most expensive boarding schools, Winchester College. He and his wife Akshata Murty are the richest inhabitants of Downing Street in history. In fact their combined £651million fortune make them richer than the King. The King! Incredible.
And so this is why “keep it real” is such good advice, especially when you’re the Prime Minister like Rishi Sunak. If you try to out-working class someone or pretend to be something you’re not, you’re going to look completely ridiculous when you’re inevitably rumbled. You can’t grow up in a six-bedroom house in a cul-de-sac in Southampton and then try to talk to people about your “struggle”, can you?
Why couldn’t Rishi Sunak just admit he was lucky and privileged and say he now wants to create opportunities for others to be as comfortable and successful as he is? After all, his dad was a GP and his mum ran a pharmacy and clearly worked hard to give him and his siblings the best opportunities in life. People would have respected that. It’s not like he’s from some aristrocratic background where his family’s wealth is being passed on from 700 years ago or something.
Well anyway, what’s done is done and Rishi Sunak will probably be out of a job come July 5. Then again, lots of things can happen between now and then. For example, did you know Rishi Sunak likes Haribo? That’s got to be +10,000 votes right there.