The Unmaking of Rishi Sunak

RISHI SUNAK, ACCIDENTAL prime minister of Britain, will, barring a miracle, have lost his job by the time you read this because he is richer than the King of England; pays just 23 per cent tax instead of the 45 per cent bracket for millionaires through a fiddle; has no clue about the deep emotional history of Britain and the heroism of its masses during World War II and the existential struggle against Nazi Germany; is careless about the crime wave epidemic in London affecting ordinary people; and clueless about the remarkable fact that the only commodity whose price has not risen in the past 14 years of Tory rule is cocaine. Cocaine cost £50 a gram in 2010; it is £50 a gram in 2024. The price of everything else from food to fads has inflated to circus proportions.

The personal residence of the Sunaks is a manor in the countryside with a private lake and heated swimming pool for which the local electricity network had to be upgraded, a privilege reserved for those who rule the land in the name of democracy. From the perspective of the commoner, the Sunaks slum it out in 10 Downing Street only because of the job.

The voter would not normally mind this so much, for the class system was refined if not invented in Britain. The British are not communists. If they can tolerate the wealth of a monarch, they can coexist with the bank account of a prime minister. But they have a deep and abiding belief in egalitarianism and the rule of law. They do not like to be cheated. They will not tolerate a millionaire’s tax diddle. Violent insurgency has always been a trifle impolite in their scheme of things; they prefer the infinitely more civilised option of booting out the incumbent through the ballot box.

Robert Palmer, executive director of an organisation called Tax Justice, reflected general opinion when he said he was “shocked” to learn that Sunak had paid only half-a-million as tax on an annual income of £2.33 million, when he should have paid roughly double that. Till 2022, Sunak retained his status of ‘permanent US resident’ not because he wanted to live in America but because he did not want to pay British tax. He relinquished the dodge only under pressure. In other news, he “forgot” to raise capital gains tax when in charge of Britain’s finances. His wife Akshata Murty, daughter of a famous Indian billionaire, remained a non-domicile even after her husband became cabinet minister and prime minister. When a ruffled media broke the story, she “promised” to pay the full British tax “in the future”. Unsurprisingly, that future never arrived.

London journalists are as hard-boiled as a swan’s egg left in an oven, and as unsentimental as a sergeant major with a casualty list. The media cartoons, bitter as a wasp bite, laughed with the usual twist of cruelty when Sunak, asked if he had faced any deprivation as a child, replied that he had been denied Sky TV. Reporters on the election beat have been stunned by the rage against an elitist prime minister who does not quite understand that entitlement can get you hired by a cosy cabal of peers but cannot keep you in this job.

According to last week’s Sunday Times, Sunak appeared to “physically recoil” when a staff member at a pottery factory in the Cotswolds shouted that “he should tax millionaires more”. No prizes for guessing the identity of the millionaire in question. This august newspaper, which likes to keep its editorial voice calm, wrote that Sunak has looked embattled and “cursed”, a harsh but ac­curate judgment. In the more studious realm of books, Michael Peel, back home after 13 years as foreign correspondent, or through the Tory years, has described contemporary Britain as trapped in “dysmorphic disorder” and “mythomania”, according to a review published in the past weekend. These are arduous terms for self-inflicted chaos. Tom Peck, writing in Tuesday’s Times, describes how three women positioned “directly behind the prime minister” for the benefit of the cameras at a public event “provided a valuable public service”. One of them reacted to Sunak’s warning against a Labour supermajority by clenching her teeth; the second managed to “pull off an eye-roll that very clearly said, ‘Erm, it won’t actually mean anything will it, prime minister, because that term, supermajority, doesn’t actually mean anything does it, not in this country anyway’.” As for the third lady, did her “eyes flash with sudden menace?”

Sunak stripped himself of any dignity on the day he turned his back on commemorative ceremonies on the beaches of Normandy where the allies of World War II had gathered to remember the 80th anniversary of D-day. His decision to abandon this emotional high point of 20th-century history because of some television interview was a combination of ignorance, indifference and naiveté

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The pain points of the electorate are being captured on routine stops along the campaign trail. Conservative candidates have been betting against themselves, which means on losing their seats, which may be odd, but the odds are good when the bets are placed. Might as well gain something from the wreck. This cul­ture of despair is augmented by senior Tories. They no longer ask voters to bring them back to power but to curtail a humongous Labour majority. On the last day of speeches, Sunak was pleading for a hung parliament, not a majority. A veteran Conservative col­umnist, Matthew Parris, declared impending defeat with typical British sangfroid on Tuesday in the Times: “This Thursday I shall do something I haven’t done on election night in half a century. I shall switch off my TV, radio and phone and go to bed.”

As for the stable price of cocaine or the vulnerable mobile phone swiped from a table in a pub under your proverbial nose, London’s much-vaunted police have told victims that they do not consider anything stolen a crime if the object is worth less than £200. In real life, make the value of their official concern much higher. Try telling the police that your laptop has been stolen. They will advise you in sonorous tones to be more careful. Steal from the rich and get their attention; steal from the poor and get a pat on the back.

The biggest British industry today, and possibly the largest employer, is operated by drug mafias within eye-contact of the police. As Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper put it, people feel that the police do not exist in London. She promises to change this, pronto. You can be sure the coming Labour govern­ment will also raise taxes on millionaires, but by then Mr and Mrs Ex-Prime Minister might be back in California scouting for lucrative membership of company boards.

Sunak stripped himself of any remaining dignity on the day he turned his back on commemorative ceremonies on the beaches of Normandy where the allies of World War II had gath­ered to remember the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the perilous first act, in which thousands lost their lives, of the liberation of Britain and Europe from Nazism. His decision to abandon this emotional high point of 20th-century history because of some silly television interview was an extraordinary combination of ignorance, indif­ference and bewildering naiveté. It left him naked in the eyes of the people he had presumed to lead. He looked like what he was: an interloper. His sharpest detractors quickly voiced what most of Britain thought. He did not belong to the culture of Britain.

In British eyes he ceased to be British. It was never about colour. It was about a profound vacuum in the soul of an upstart. In a trice the man whom John Bull Conservatives had accepted, perhaps in some silent penitence for periods in their past, proved to be a pretender. Sunak, still confident that he is superman when he was a mere byproduct of luck, will retire into the lucrative oblivion of the speech circuit and the company board; the lasting damage has been done to the most successful electoral machine in British democracy. His mentors have much to answer for.

Each election is a mirror. The mirror has not broken; the im­age has cracked. Governance is in crisis in all democracies: aspira­tions are relentless in their upward mobility, productivity is shift­ing towards mechanical menials, the work ethic has regressed, and governments have become status quoist since no one has a new idea. One cannot quantify it, much less provide rigorous evidence, but the legitimate and necessary spread of social and economic aspirations might also be inducing the notion that the requirements of life should either be free or provided at negligible cost. That is not the way a capitalist economy works. If the 21st century wants a post-capitalist age then it has to produce a Karl Smith, an heir to Karl Marx and Adam Smith, pretty quickly to stop dysmorphic disorder or, worse, mythomania.

In the 2024 summer triumph, all that Labour leader Keir Starmer has had to do is be banal, avoid the curse of a self-goal, and accuse Sunak of being out of touch, which has the merit of being true

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Governments have a commonsense option in the short run: give power back to the small institution. This is democratic. More usefully, it helps spread the blame when things go wrong; accountability does not begin and end with one man or woman. In the prevalent systems, power travels to the head, defying the gravity which keeps anyone grounded and stable.

It is a sign of the age that the resurrection of the Labour

Party is being led by the middle class, not the worker. The English working class is in transition. It wants to rise out of the accent that has defined it for too long. It has benefited from a transformational education. It wants an alliance with lawyers and teachers and professionals after centuries of dependence on nobs. The astute Tory leader Boris Johnson wrought a brief alliance with Conservatives in the cause of anti-Europe nationalism, but that did not bring the economic surge which was promised. Boris, who likes a laugh at the pub after the funeral, went on holiday during the campaign, returned just in time to make a speech after a “personal message” from the protégé who stabbed him to become prime minister. Sunak had to swallow a gallon of pride. Johnson cheered the faithful with rousing wit and sharp invective against Labour but for some inexplicable reason never mentioned the prime minister’s name in his speech. One English newspaper noted that he had turned up to dance on Sunak’s grave, perhaps on the way to his own resurrection.

The bad news for Conservatives is that the demographic coalition which will put Labour in office is likely to be stable, in which case the next change of government could come only in 2040, possibly led by a party like the Liberal Democrats which has swallowed the moderate Tory rump. In the 2024 summer triumph, all that Labour leader Keir Starmer has had to do is be banal, avoid the curse of a self-goal, and accuse Sunak of being out of touch, which has the merit of being true. Rishi Sunak is out of line, out of reach, out of depth, out of ideas, and by the end of this week will be out of time.

About The Author

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is the author of, among several titles, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. His latest book is Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns

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