Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid: the ministers who called out PM’s ‘tone’ and ‘values’
The chancellor, until recently seen as the most likely successor should Boris Johnson be ousted, has been tipped several times to resign on issues of principle or honour in recent months, but never did – until now.
Sunak feels almost ubiquitous in UK politics but he has only been an MP since 2015, a minister since 2018 and chancellor for a little over two years, taking over following the resignation of Sajid Javid, his fellow departee on Tuesday.
Always a fluent communicator, well connected and with obvious ambition, Sunak’s public profile soared during the Covid pandemic, thanks to his largesse with billions of pounds of public money via the furlough scheme, and an approach to press conferences that often appeared more empathic than Johnson.
Couple this with a highly organised – some argued overly flashy – approach to personal branding through the Treasury, and Sunak was viewed as the obvious heir apparent.
There was one problem, however: his wealth. Sunak had a significant fortune of his own thanks to a pre-politics job in the hedge fund world. But even this pales into comparison with the wealth of his wife, Akshata Murty.
Murty, who met Sunak when they were studying at Stanford business school, is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Infosys and owns a 0.93% stake, worth about £690m, in the tech firm.
In April it emerged that Murty claimed non-domicile status, allowing her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from Infosys, which totalled £11.6m in the last tax year.
In the wake of that revelation it emerged that Sunak had held a US green card, meaning he declared himself a “permanent US resident” for tax purposes for 19 months while he was chancellor and for six years as an MP.
All this cast
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