‘I’m begging the government to listen’: Martin Lewis on getting political, mental health and the cost of living crisis
Martin Lewis is in his happy place. The keen walker is sitting in an outdoor cafe in a London park he loves, and, a couple of days shy of his 50th birthday, is a contented family man who assiduously expunges any swearing from the record in case his nine-year-old daughter happens to read this piece.
When he left a postgraduate journalism degree in Cardiff more than 20 years ago, he had a seemingly simple idea: “I always wanted to be the person on This Morning talking about money. When you watch something like that,” he says, “you see the stylists and you see the hairdressers and you see the cooks and you see the psychiatrists, you see all of these people and they talk about changing people’s lives. Well, you can’t do any of that without money.” It’s an idea that has gained him great wealth – the Sunday Times rich list puts it at £123m, mainly due to the sale of his comparison website moneysupermarket.com, which he built in the early 00s for £100. But also household-name status and, more recently, adulation.
The admiration didn’t come overnight. It was first noticed during the tortuous Brexit debate, when he was voted, in a general poll, the most trusted voice on the issue. When I suggest that he’s now a new-wave Marcus Rashford – in that he is offering a forceful critique of the status quo, from a place you weren’t expecting – he says: “Well, I’ve been around a lot longer.”
Yet despite his success, his manner is anything but carefree. And while that has many causes, the immediate one is the cost of living crisis. On this he has emerged from a sea of wilful political obliviousness as one of the most trenchant and steadfast voices. Two weeks ago, he says, “I made a deliberate, nuanced and specific comment, which is that I’m
Read more on theguardian.com
