Rishi Sunak: Example of Justice, or Product of Privilege?

The new UK prime minister is richer than King Charles III – in fact, he is the richest British leader ever. Sunak wears Prada shoes and bespoke Henry Herbert suits, which makes him stand in stark contrast with a country where inequality is advancing by leaps and bounds.

In 2014, Oxfam admitted that just five families own more wealth than 12.6 million British people -- wage inequality is a sad reality for UK society.

According to OECD data based on the Gini coefficient, the United Kingdom is among the most unequal nations in Europe.

Rishi Sunak and his wife's fortune amounts to $837 million, according to Forbes. Part of his wealth was raised from one of the most controversial financial institutions in the world due to its role in the 2008 financial crisis: Goldman Sachs.

Progressive discourse and its supporters portray him as the product of social justice and racial integrity: the son of Indian-origin migrants who managed to rise above the rest to study at the best universities and sneak into the upper echelons of power.

Experts point out that the new leader of the Conservative Party is the descendant of the Indian elite that enjoyed a privileged status during the British Empire, which dominated India from 1858 to 1947. Yes, Sunak is a son of migrants, but one who bears very few similarities with the vast majority of ordinary Indians and Pakistanis.

"As in all countries subjected to colonialism in the past, [in India], elites emerged that formed ties with the Empire and, later, with the metropolis — when India became an independent country. This was beneficial for them and allowed them to do business. The British Empire maintained economic ties and a close relationship with local elites who were well-to-do," Ana Luisa Trujillo Juárez, an academic at the International Relations Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told Sputnik.

Rishi Sunak was born into a middle class family in northern Southampton that was able to afford private education. In fact, his academic background is typical of British Conservative politicians: Sunak studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford and Stanford, where tuition fees are hardly affordable for the average British family.

Sunak said that his father was a doctor and his mother a pharmaceutical chemist. They lived first in Kenya, then moved to Tanzania, and then emigrated to England. In several interviews, Sunak noted that he had once been called a "Paki" — a term used derogatorily in British society to refer to migrants from Pakistan or other South Asian countries.

Sunak is not very popular in the United Kingdom today: almost two-thirds of Britons believe he is not a politician who is in touch with ordinary people, and only 13% consider him a prime minister who is aware of the country's social environment.

"He was hardly the first choice until a few weeks ago. He was the second preference. And yes, he is the UK's first non-white prime minister, but his appointment also coincides with the commemoration of India's 75th year of independence. As the newspaper India Today put it, they are 'proud that a son of India, a former British colony, is now governing the United Kingdom,'" Roberto Viesca, a political analyst at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said.

However, that narrative does not fit with the fact that Sunak belongs to the British elite: he is married to Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, whom some media outlets have even dubbed as "the Bill Gates of India."

Murthy is the owner of Infosys, a Bangalore-based technology giant in Asia. Her huge wealth generated a stir in the British society after media reported that the billionaire had been living under the "non-resident" tax regime in the UK for years, which means she was "freed" from paying a huge amount in taxes.

Last year alone, Akshata reported 14 million euros in dividends from her stake in Infosys. In taxes, on the other hand, she paid only 36,000 pounds.

"It will be a topic for debate that [Sunak] will have to deal with, and his success in the government depends on that. He is a man who has been linked to the City, let's not forget his [work] at Goldman Sachs, a rating agency that received a lot of discredit after the 2008 crisis. Since then, there has been a kind of denial or annoyance on the part of British citizens towards politicians linked to the private sector at a very high level, as it is in the case of Sunak", Trujillo Juárez, author of the essay "Claves para entender la seguridad y defensa de la Unión Europea (2020)" (Keys to Understanding the Security and Defense of the European Union – ed. note Sputnik), told Sputnik.

Goldman Sachs was accused of being one of the masterminds behind the concealment of the Greek debt deficit. In fact, countless articles have been written about how this institution was involved in the origin of the Greek sovereign debt crisis. Facing the possibility of bankruptcy after the 2008 crisis, the company managed to survive by switching from being an investment bank to a commercial bank (thanks to the US Fed) — a status that allowed it to receive $10 billion in aid, granted under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Later, however, Goldman Sachs was accused of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for "suppress mortgages" mechanism in the United States.

Sunak also served as director of the Catamaran Ventures Fund, which invested in Reddit and SpaceX, and one of the founding partners of Theleme Partners, which in turn is an investor in Moderna, a company that manufactures vaccines against COVID-19.

Previously, the British PM was member of the TCI fund, operated by British tycoon and philanthropist Christopher Hohn.

Experts believe that Rishi Sunak needs effective and rapid economic solutions, especially aimed at alleviating the energy crisis and inflation, which have hit British society hard in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine crisis.

"This is the only way he could improve his image and [boost] popularity among people disappointed with the traditional neoliberal class," Trujillo concluded.