Is £650m Rishi Sunak too rich to be Prime Minister in a cost of living crisis?

While we have relatively few rough sleepers, the number of families living in hostels, hotels or other temporary accommodation is huge and a damning indictment of the housing crisis in this country. When population is accounted for, the UK has roughly five times as many people in temporary accommodation as the US, and around 20 times that of Norway.

This is despite being one of the richest countries in the world. Remember, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt keep telling us “the plan is working” and the economy is improving. Clearly it’s not working for everyone.

So it was quite a stark contrast, when it was announced that Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty’s personal fortune has increased by £120 million in the last year. The pair are now worth £651 million, largely based on Murty’s stake in Infosys, the £55.3 billion Indian IT giant co-founded by her billionaire father.

That’s a company which has benefited from government contracts in recent years. Since 2015, Infosys has been awarded contracts worth around £986 million in joint bids with other companies, Full Fact reports.

And Sunak is by some distance the wealthiest person to ever inhabit Downing Street. No10 says we should judge the Prime Minister on his record. “He’s been asked about this before and we’d always point people to the actions that he takes to support people,” his deputy spokesperson said.

“When he’s been asked this question before, he’s responded that people should judge him by his actions, such as providing support during the pandemic. That’s his focus and his priority and he should be judged on that.”

It’s a fair argument to make, we should have the best person in charge - no matter their wealth or status. However, being Prime Minister is no ordinary job. That person has been given the privilege of making decisions on behalf of an entire country.

And Sunak’s time in Downing Street has coincided with the worst cost of living crisis in generations. His critics argue he isn’t equipped to make decisions on behalf of people struggling on the breadline, he cannot relate to their plight.

His government tried to bring in a law which would have allowed police to arrest rough sleepers for smelling badly, before it was knocked back by backbench unrest. He used transgender people as a punchline in PMQs, on the same day that the mum of murdered trans teen Brianna Ghey was visiting the House of Commons. 

Remember if Rishi Sunak gets made homeless from Downing Street, as all the polls suggest he will, he could move back into his five-bedroom mews house in upmarket Kensington, just down the road. Or he could stroll south a mile or two to a smaller flat he and his wife own on the Old Brompton Road.

Outside of London, Sunak could head back to his £2m Grade-II listed Georgian manor house in Richmond, Yorkshire. The 19th century pile was once a vicarage, and is nestled in the pretty village of Kirby Sigston. 

He could also jet over to California, to live out his tech bro dream at the family’s Santa Monica penthouse, which is reportedly worth £5.5m. When Keir Starmer has mentioned Sunak’s wealth, the Prime Minister has accused the Labour leader of the “politics of envy”.

However, I would question whether it has influenced his actions. Remember the government’s promise to end no-fault evictions? Well since Boris Johnson made that promise around 80,000 households have been threatened with homelessness. And renters are still waiting. 

While leaseholders, stuck in a feudal system which levies astronomical service charges, have also been promised reform. On a LBC phone-in last year, a dad-of-four, whose mortgage was going up from £1,500 to £2,800-a-month, asked the Prime Minister what he should do.

Sunak merely said to “talk to his bank” and told him “a typical payment” would only go up by £200. Some comfort. Maybe if Sunak had experienced the fear and anxiety of any of these situations, he would have acted as quickly as he did to bring in the furlough scheme during the pandemic. Instead, the Prime Minister has waffled on about “mob rule replacing democratic rule” and banned civil servants from wearing rainbow lanyards. 

Ultimately, while most of us have got poorer over the last year, Rishi Sunak has got much, much richer.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.