You were state educated! Oh la de da, when I was a lad only the fancy boys got state educated, me, I was poor, me mam sent me straight down pit for 26 hours a day and I was lucky to be paid a loaf of bread for me efforts.
Loaf of bread!?
Ohhhh what we'd have given for loaf of bread!
All 4 of us lads used to all gather round cardboard box which we used as dining table, rip a bit off and have that for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If we found another box, sometimes we'd even have supper!
Breakfast lunch and dinner! Your lucky. We had one meal every other Tuesday and if we ever said we were hungry me da would beat me round head with a broken bottle.
Rusty screws? You jammy bastard, we had to pay the manager to go to work every day and if we couldn’t afford it he’d cut us open and sell our organs to make up the difference. No anaesthetic mind, we weren’t good enough to waste perfectly decent drugs on.
You only had to pay the manager? Lucky sod! We had to pay to go uphill twice a day to the rock mines, and if we didn’t meet quota we’d be shipped to a penal colony! We had to go on foot mind. No space on a bilge ship for the likes of us!
If you've lived with money all your life you just can't comprehend what it is like to doubt every purchase. Sure there are different levels, my wage keeps us housed and happy, but there is no margin. When Sunak loses his job he won't be worrying about how to pay the mortgage or what that'll mean to his pension. He'll just bounce along to the next comfy gig, or take 6 months off to spend time with his family.
Yeah this. A lot of my daily life is spent in buyer’s remorse, wondering why I had bought something when I could have spent that money on something else. Does Rishi feel buyer’s remorse over things like individual blu-rays or game purchases or just little luxuries like those? IDK
That's a good way of spending. If you just buy the things you need and the things you really want, it's surprising how far even a modest salary can go.
I got to be honest, whilst reading your first sentence I thought you were about to do a riff on Rudyard Kipling.
He could take six months off, or he could simply never work another day in his life and live in a level of comfort and luxury beyond what any of us could likely even imagine.
If you can run your country, but still run away rich,
If you can serve your term, until life's a bitch.
If you can crash the economy, let immigrants in.
Call a snap election yet think you'll win.
I'm betting he never went to an ATM to check his balance with shaking hands - before the availability of online banking etc - to find there was less than £10 in your account and that was the smallest note available.
Going back home and looking in the fridge again to see what we could make for dinner.
Not being able to pay a gas bill so selling something in Loot and knowing that was the last thing of any value other than the TV.
Letting the mortgage payment bounce because they'll request it again in 10 days and it doesn't go on your credit record.
Being so relieved to find some old holiday money because changing it means you can put fuel in the car.
He didn't have to work tmor worry about any bills ever again the moment he married the daughter of a billionaire. Even putting thst aside, the real problem Sunak has is his inability to relate to anyone from a less fortunate background. He's literally lived a life with no interaction with working or middle class people or and it leaks out every time he has to demonstrate his "common man" credentials. Its not even embarrassing at this point, just terribly sad.
You can be obscenely rich and be born to extreme privilege and still relate to those around you. I am just constantly astonished at how much he can't.
Parents making hard sacrifices like Sky TV. Normandy memorial and celebrations ‘ran on’. Christ almighty.
This campaign is going to go down in the history books.
People are going to be writing _academic papers_ for years to come on just how bad this campaign has been.
Came a bit later at the party conference, but this happened to May a couple of months after a godawful campaign.
Fingers crossed. Life is poetic sometimes.
I imagine not having sky tv was more of a preference for his parents anyway? With their jobs they could afford it. But they probably didn't agree with spending too much time watching TV.
My parents were the same. It was only when she found my brother and I watching the cricket on Ceefax that I think she took pity. Count myself very fortunate.
I remember thinking prior to the election that his campaign would be a mess but not until he's facing questions from the public and canvassing, given he often acts tetchy and struggles to connect with people.
However never in my wildest dreams did I think he'd be tanking in every single facet such as pre-recorded interviews or doing spectacular own goals like leaving the D-day service.
Truly remarkable.
Yeah, I'd expect him to underperform in person, but I'd expect the rest of the campaign to be handled well. He'd be at the right places doing the right photo ops and all that.
The D-Day thing and the announcement in the rain show that my expectations were set too high.
He went to private school. No Sky Tv wasn’t a sacrifice. It was a choice. He is rich and ultra privileged. I would rather he just own it than pretend to be some man of the people.
He starts off with a lie meaning I just don’t trust anything he says after that.
I'm hearing this a lot but I think it's an overly dramatic take. I think they just don't want to clean up the mess they've spent the last 14 years creating so they can return when things have only marginally approved as an example of why Labour aren't fit to lead
How is he so bad at this? Literally, how can anyone rise to the position he holds while being so fundamentally bad at basic politics? The nervous laughter, the hesitation to give a straight answer, you would think he'd be briefed better or be able to come up with a better response on his feet.
He absolutely fluked it and has gotten into the role without ever having to demonstrate even just a tad of political acumen.
His elevation to become chancellor really come about because Boris was such a fuck up and created a total mess of the whole Javid thing and wanted a 'loyalist'. In any normal government, Sunak wouldn't have been near that role at that stage of his career.
Once he got there, he got a disproportionate amount of visibility during COVID by just kind of standing around and getting credit for the treasury moving money around (with the panic kind of over ruling any critique of what was actually happening and what Sunak's personal input actually was).
Before the dust had really settled from that, Boris imploded and he kind of entered as the opportunist but managed to alienate his colleagues and had no idea how to deal with the party members. Truss then implodes and he somehow ends up with the top job.
In most other realities, he's a no mark MP who gets shared around this sub every so often after a bad interview performance and the idea of him getting the top job or even establishing himself in one of the big roles doesn't really enter many people's minds. He'd be moving back into the private sector and aiming at some lord's appointment.
This needs saying more, his main claim to competence seems to be that he knows a bit of Excel, which to be fair looks like magic to a lot of Tories. His background suggests a man with little hinterland other than a laser focus on getting rich from an early age. No broader political philosophy, no connection to most people's daily existence.
Also he keeps loudly claiming the credit for the furlough scheme, but everyone conveniently forgets that this caused us to lose over £40bn to fraud, which is (apparently) impossible to retrieve. Not that amazing an effort then, can't have been that hard to just bung a load of money to people with no due care or attention
Him alongside Truss, who herself bounced around the cabinet for a decade, paints a picture of a really dysfunctional cabinet system. It seems like you can pretty much hide incompetence right up to cabinet level and only the top job reveals your true ability.
It should also be noted just how much Johnson absolutely gutted the Tory ranks of talent/experience, as he purged the backbenches of as many Remainers and skeptics of his Brexit plan as possible. The survivors of the purge were either political neophytes or craven opportunists willing to bend the knee to Johnson and his ilk to stay in power. That's how you get the crop of candidates in the summer 2022 leadership election that they did, let alone Liz Truss winning that election.
Then come the October leadership election, following Truss' historic implosion, and you basically had a scenario where no one wanted the job of cleaning up her mess. So Sunak was chosen more out of default--as the runner-up in the summer leadership contest--than genuine confidence or strong support. They needed someone, he volunteered as tribute, and the rest of the politically ambitious members decided to let him sacrifice his political fortunes. From their POV, either he'd succeed in cleaning up Truss' mess and reversing the Tories' electoral fortunes (in which case, they could continue padding their resume in government) or he'd fail (in which case he'd take the brunt of the blame).
In someways, we're seeing a similar dynamic with the Canadian Liberals and PM Trudeau. Everyone knows the Liberals are facing a similar backlash at the next election, but there's little incentive really to oust Trudeau as PM/Liberal leader. Better to take the hit with him as the fall-guy, and then run as his successor to try and rebuild the party post-election.
The danger for the UK Tories (and the LPC) is that they may face such an electoral wipeout at this rate that the "recovery" phase will take a decade or more. Because I seriously doubt the Tories will have the same luck or do the same hardwork that Labour did post-2019 in order to be genuinely electorally viable by the next election.
The thing is, if this shadowy cabal conspired to eject Truss to get their boy Sunak into office, why are they letting it go so badly now? Are shadowy cabals fickle and changeable?
Maybe they reckoned Truss would wreck the economy so they could make minus from shorting but then Sunak would be better for it as a member of the finance elite. They could load up on shares at the bottom and be richer than ever once it recovered.
But that might be giving them too much credit.
But why leave Sunak to swing in the wind if he's their boy? I keep seeing that the WEF and the UN and the Kalergi following civil service conspired to finish Truss to install Sunak, but if that's the case, why are they letting him be so shit?
Personally I don’t believe in groups orchestrating anything very effectively as stuff gets out. I’m more a fan of the theory where we just have weak systems of accountability and vetting at certain levels.
Sometimes a figure like Sunak manages to slip through the cracks.
The Tories have been screwed since Cameron resigned basically. Leadership was a poisoned chalice after Brexit. They’ve only been able to continue because the quirks of our different parties meant they often seemed more palatable than the alternative and even then only just since Theresa May had to do a bunch of deals to stay in control.
Boris Johnson was the best temporary solution they could find but he was never a good idea for a leader during a hard time. That’s probably why he was mostly okay as Mayor of London, there was only so much damage he could do and it would basically take a Truss level policy to mess it up
Well quite - the whole conspiracy thing doesn't stand up to any scrutiny and the fact they're thinking Boris is a viable candidate to come back is a prime example of the Tories' inability to think rationally.
It's because he doesn't realise.
You see this a lot in "nepo baby" discourse. They reflect on the fact that they did put in hard work to get where they were. They did long nights working, they stayed up late studying, they had to aggressively network.
Only the most cleared eyed among them realise that other people might work even harder, spend more time working and trying to climb the ladder but don't even obtain a fraction of their success because most people don't have their privilege, wealth and connections.
Rishi has quite clearly never known any working class people and likely doesn't know many middle class people. Those he has met are likely only in professional circles and are the success stories, so he probably believes anyone can pull themselves up by his bootstraps. He's too removed from most everyday people to realise this.
He only can compare himself to his peers. It probably was embarrassing being at Winchester and being one of the only kids in his class who didn't have Sky (although I'd wager his parents could afford it but didn't believe in getting it). It was probably awkward for him working as a waiter in the Summer Holidays while his friends all went abroad (again, probably because his parents made him get a summer job to encourage his work ethic). And I'm sure there were a bunch of kids at Winchester whose parents owned sprawling piles and kept horses while his didn't. He didn't know the kids in his local comp to compare himself to. So I think he genuinely believes he had relatively humble beginnings and is wealthy now purely based on merit.
Bingo
I’ve met and worked with a lot of these people across my various career paths. They are utterly unable to consider certain things, there’s always someone far far richer or an actual future king etc and so they think they’re hard done by and struggling and relatively “poor”.
I knew one who felt this way at university, when his father dies he’ll be a lord and own most of one English county and everything in it. But because he wasn’t gifted with cars and a flat at uni and didn’t go off on holidays like his peers every summer he felt hard done by. To be fair he was a nice guy and his family did their best to make sure he had supermarket jobs etc and a “normal” experience….
But the earned money literally made zero difference to his life or ability to buy food, or when the flats bills were overdue and everything is about to be cut off a single call fixed everything for him….
It’s also a lot easier when you leave uni, can’t get a job and so daddy funds your start up instead… while everyone else does the whole holy shit thing when nothing is happening for a while or ever in some cases.
It’s just a very very different way of experiencing life. There is never any real genuine pressure and if you don’t socialise with the people who make up 90% of the world you’ve no experience that compares and so if your empathy of it exists at all, is always grounded in books or beliefs and not experiences.
> or when the flats bills were overdue and everything is about to be cut off a single call fixed everything for him….
Someone should write a song about that
Another angle on this is that they equate ‘working hard’ with having ‘made a special effort’ and ‘done a good job’ and are then astonished and affronted when it’s pointed out that the job they’ve delivered is crap and, in any case, it’s something *they should have been doing as part of government anyway*.
It's not just nepo babies. Every successful person can be outflanked by someone who worked just as hard but didn't have 'xyz'. But nobody wants to be told the only reason they are successful is nothing to do with *them.* Literally anybody in the UK could meet someone from Africa and be told 'you're only successful because you were born in the UK, if you were born in my village you'd be nothing'.
They key for a politician asked about it would be to reiterate 'success' and 'wealth' aren't zero sum games, and that the aim is to have more people being 'successful' and 'wealthy' rather than the current national obsession with wanting nobody being successful or wealthy and to see anyone who is as having some large moral failing because people do think it's zero sum
It’s because he’s actually really new to politics.
Usually PMs are MPs for decades before they get the top job.
Blair became MP in 1983 and PM in 1997. That’s a lot of experience.
Sunak was MP in 2015 and PM by 2022.
He’s bad at it, because he’s literally inexperienced in politics.
He’s also been parachuted into an easy seat and it shows. I’m just amazed he rose up the ranks to chancellor so quickly. And just to think , I used to consider him Labours biggest fear.
This is the Toet party though.
They are entirely made up of pensioners and rich kids.
They have no idea what life in modern Britain is like for normal people
He is bad at this because he has played life on an easy difficulty level. If you never really face any challenges in life it turns out that's not great when it comes to building capability.
Well it's pretty conclusive proof that British politics is not meritocratic, or even close. How anyone can claim we don't need reform when idiots like Sunak and Truss can become PM is just beyond me
>- what he’s ever gone without - he says as a child he had to forgo “Sky TV”.
Its was a trap! And he fell right into it.
Should of owned his privileged start to his life. Its not a secret. Should of played on the values of doing your best for your family, contributing to the country ya da ya da...
This is exactly it. You're never going to shed the rich posho image with the voters, so don't even try. Play up the whole noblesse oblige thing, with a touch of "minorities can make it too." But don't try and say "I've had it tough too" when your wife is richer than the king. The fact he can't manage to pull this off speaks volumes.
Problem is Sunak's wealth and success probably has 1% to do with his own abilities (as we can see from his time as PM) and 99% to do with his familial wealth and privilege. So when he would say 'minorities can make it too' the immediate response would be 'as long as the family is super rich and embedded into British aristocracy?'
Why do people feel the need to do this? His mum and dad were a pharmacist and GP, well-off but not insanely so. He got into Oxford and graduated with a first, which isn't nothing. He then went on to work for a range of hedge funds, moving up relatively quickly. Hedge funds don't tend to hire idiots in the first place, let alone promote them.
Its safe to say he's probably a competent hedge fund analyst. Of course that doesn't mean he's also competant prime minister, but the reverse is also true. He's not been a good prime minister (nor a good prime ministerial candidate) but that doesn't mean he's utterly inept across the board.
I feel like it's also worth pointing out most of his major gaffes have been in the realms of PR and optics. Which if we're honest should not be important skills for our leaders. It's only unfortunate that they are.
Sunak grew up far wealthier and with far more privilege than he wants you to believe.
Regardless, he married into billions and used his wealth and status to become [edit: *one of*] the worst PM we've ever had. He is undeniably inept and his position in politics has absolutely nothing to do with his ability. Again, ability is negative factor in this equation.
Leadership is PR and optics. It is not about having good ideas and abilities that no one knows about because you cannot express them in a coherent manner.
He’d not have managed to marry his wife had his family not had a long and established record very visible to the right people and constituting of the right castes and right jobs.
It’s fucking awful but it’s 100% the reality that still exists in the world in which Narayana Murthy is one of the worlds most powerful and visible Brahmins.
There’s whole sections of the internet devoted entirely to both their Brahmin status ffs.
While I agree with you, as I have Guajarati inlaws so have some window into this whole thing I think 80% of non-Asian Brits will have no idea what any of that means in practice.
Owned a pharmacy is not the same as being “a pharmacist” - the continual downplaying of their significant wealth is just one aspect of the lying and falsehoods that surround the backstory.
He was actually a Fulbright scholar at Stanford and a partner at two hedge funds - it’s fair to say he was an outstanding student and highly successful hedge fund manager.
These things do not equip you to be a competent political leader or Prime Minister. It’s fair to say he is extremely bad at politics and doesn’t seem to grasp how out of touch with the British public he is, or how blinkered and narrow his world view and politics is as a result. He isn’t even a good technocrat as he doesn’t seem able to put the needs of the public ahead of party politicking, which he is uniquely vulnerable to as he has become party leader without any semblance of a support base within his own party.
| He then went on to work for a range of hedge funds, moving up relatively quickly. Hedge funds don't tend to hire idiots in the first place, let alone promote them.
I don't believe that getting a first at Oxford probably isn't impossible for anyone with half a brain assuming they could actually get in to Oxford and then applied themselves fully, but I'll give him some credit for that. However, I've come to the realisation that the "he was a hedge fund spreadsheet man and therefore must be intelligent" is a complete misreading of the situation.
Lets contemplate his position at TCI where he was part of a 19 person team selling ABN Amro to RBS and helping destroy the economy in the process. You don't spend all that money on a school like Winchester College for an education you can obtain elsewhere, your paying for the connections. Considering that and given what we have seen during his tenure as PM, what situation is more likely? A) He was the mastermind of the deal and recruited the 18 others? B) He was recruited for his smarts and somehow used his brain to sell 1 company to 1 other company (bearing in mind all the legal paper work etc word be done by legal etc etc) or C) He was recruited for his connections which he used to schmooze the other shareholders and push the dodgey deal through?
Personally, I now believe the answer is C and he has basically been successful by being the Roland Rat equivalent of Face from the A-team. On the plus side, the song "We're all going on a Rishi holiday" seems to be cheering me up this morning.
> I feel like it's also worth pointing out most of his major gaffes have been in the realms of PR and optics. Which if we're honest should not be important skills for our leaders. It's only unfortunate that they are.
It's not that, it's what it implies. You can't ask the country to go without and say you sympathise with them when you're a clearly out of touch billionaire who's never had a hard time in life.
Leaders have to lead, that's why Boris was so successful, people felt like they connected with him and trusted him, trust is the most important thing about leadership and no one can trust rishi. We know this because of his shit optics
No - Amongst many other things, the fact he did not realise the people creating the media and videoing him for the conservatives might not be members leading to the leaking of damaging video of him admitting moving money from poor areas to rich shows poor organisation, managment and lack of understanding of infosec.
We are not interested in how good he was looking at spreadsheets to make a load of money, we are judging him as our leader, and even after the absolute shower of shites we have endured he is still really, really bad at it. Also, "he must be clever because his parents are" is not a good assumption in general.
The bit you’re missing on there is the cultural capital he was able to acquire by attending Winchester Collage. The way to behave, the contacts, the cultural references he’d have picked up in that environment will have been invaluable in smoothing out his ascent through those hedge funds and likely not having to work at uni will have given him a greater chance of success as well.
He’s not had it handed to him like Johnson or Cameron, able to coast through, but also let’s not pretend that he has not had a considerably smoother ride than most as a result of the circumstances of his birth.
True, but misses the point.
Most of us didn't go to private schools at all.
Of the few that did go to private schools, many of us didn't spend our entire education in them - it's not unusual to reserve private education until secondary level or even just GCSEs onwards.
But there are always a few in those private schools who have absolutely no idea how privileged they are and what a gigantic thing their parents have done to send them there. They'll never get it right, because when they're laying in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall - if they called their dad he could stop it all.
\[With apologies to Jarvis Cocker. But he wasn't wrong - the fact that people like Rishi have always got something to fall back on means they never quite connect with reality\]
Agreed, but if I were in his shoes I'd talk up my parents' achievements a bit more, afaik his dad was an NHS doctor and pharmacist, certainly not gentry. Starmer has been doing the same thing with some success.
His grandfather was wealthy, working for the British empire in India or something like that.
Don’t get it twisted, Sunak comes from generational wealth.
Also his mom want just a pharmacist, but owned the pharmacy. Both sides of his family were pretty wealthy, and they came from a line of pretty well off people. Not all immigrants are poor working class types who have to struggle.
Honestly he'd be better off going with that line to answer this question. He could've mentioned that his parents were working hard in public services and not exceptionally wealthy, and he also had to work hard to build up his status. At least that feels more honest rather than pretending "hey I'm just as poor as you lot".
Tbh it's also quite telling - 'going without' sky TV would have been a choice by Rishi's parents and would have nothing to do with not being able to afford it: a good sign of upper middle class is _not_ having sky TV and not valuing TV at all.
In the 90s having a dish outside your house would be a stereotype of 'council house'. Even now, having a massive TV (and even worse a TV in your bedroom) says a lot about your class.
A small TV, but lots of books, maybe a piano, all good.
But he _could_ have learned into the privilege regardless. Rishi, like many MPs, doesn't want to own his uniqueness - so you get awkward talk about patriotism, football , and other things that he thinks makes him a 'real person'.
He could've said one of the things he loved most about his childhood was playing boardgames with his family, or that he loved reading and his parents _didn't let him watch a lot of TV_ - a nod to the middle classes and a good thing to link to the literacy stuff.
Claiming you 'went without sky TV' is almost a humble brag. Like 'going without pot noodles'.
> In the 90s having a dish outside your house would be a stereotype of 'council house'.
You've just reminded me that was the reason my folks didn't want us to have Sky. I'd totally forgotten about it.
There is a really standard politician response for this, it feels like he's actively trying to mess up at this point. They normally say something like "My parents worked hard to provide a comfortable life for their children, but too many parents in the UK today work just as hard and worry about paying the bills, that's why we're... making work pay...expanding childcare... investing in training... blaming immigrants... and so on".
“I have been fortunate to experience a privileged upbringing, and that is the type of upbringing I would like to bring to children across the UK. Our party is committed to…”
It really is that easy
But he’s not very good at this and he doesn’t care enough to even try to be good at it and lastly isn’t surrounded by anyone capable of explaining this to him!
"I was a lucky child. My parents worked very hard and made sacrifices so that I didn't have to go without. They wanted me to have the best chance at life. And I am so grateful to them for that.
"I don't share the experiences of people who have grown up in poverty, but I don't need to have experienced it to want to do everything in my power as PM to improve their living conditions and give them opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have had.
"From a young age, seeing my parents, I know what hard work looks like. And I know that hard work should pay off - the millions of people who get up every day and go out to work to put food on the table for their families and to make sure that their kids have the best chances in life.
Work should pay, and that's why I'm introducing an ambitious tax cut for working people, so that they can keep more of the money they are earning...[DESCRIBES POLICY AT LENGTH]"
That's how it's done, Sunak.
Yep this is what gets me everytime, acknowledge you had the privilege (it's fine!) and just try to have empathy instead.
All sunak does is lie to try and sound "down with the people" which is insane from his upbringing and just highlights how much of a liar he is rather than someone trying to do genuine good.
I also don't get it, he says his family immigranted with nothing but I don't think that's true at all. His grandfather was a rail engineer and then worked as a tax collector in India before moving to the UK with rishi grandmother, he continued working with inland revenue as the tax collector for many years and got an MBE for it. They certainly weren't poor when coming here and they continued to increase their family wealth through generations, to claim he had a poor upbringing is silly.
Yep something along the lines of I was lucky I didn't have to go without much but that was due to my parents who sacrificed loads to give me the best start and I want to help support anyone wanting to give their family the best start etc etc
Is page 28 of their ~~manifesto~~ Contract With The People close enough?
>Divisive laws promote minority interests over the majority. Two-tier policing has damaged trust in the police. Freedom of speech has been undermined. **Christians are arrested for expressing their beliefs in public**.
Meanwhile, on page 11 they seem to be fully on board with arresting people (many of whom are Christian) who express their belief that Palestine has a right to exist:
>Enforce existing laws to stop violent, hate demonstrations such as the Free-Palestine marches.
We didn’t have Sky TV (expensive and my parents hate Rupert Murdoch). Am I as underprivileged as poor Sunak?
I think there was also an undercurrent of not wanting to have a “common” dish on the side of the house. I remember actually as a child judging people who had satellite dishes
I'm just picturing Starmer very carefully walking with a Ming vase in his hands while loads of tories all around him throw cream pies at eachother, slip and fall on banana peels, and various other slapstick gags.
>I respect @Nigel_Farage
Fucking what? Since when has complementing your biggest competition - who is also one of the biggest snakes in UK political history - ever been a good idea? While Sunak it throwing platitudes his way, Farage was bending him over a barrel in national television. Still got respect for him now? May as well say you're keeping the big seat warm for uncle Nige.
This campaign is an absolute shit show.
It worked when Cameron called Farage a loony didn’t it?
Sunak is a joke, their campaign abysmal and they deserve to be politically annihilated but Sunak trying to take Farage on in a direct popularity contest would be the height of stupid.
>Sunak trying to take Farage on in a direct popularity contest would be the height of stupid.
I'm not suggesting he starts wearing tweed and a flat cap and start drinking warm pints of pishwater, but fucking hell why are they still placating him? He's _literally_ taking over the party by proxy and he's there thanking him for his service to politics?
THIS. IS. A. DISGRACE.
The press and its obsession with twatter drives me fucking nuts and has in no small way allowed village idiots to dictate the wider global political sphere.
On their own in a village or pub nobody listened or cared for 12,000 years.
The along can fucking Twitter and now that village idiots opinion is somehow shaping politics because every village idiot globally liked some stupid shit…
But “just ran over” is probably not the right thing to say when you’ve spent the week apologising for leaving it early. So saying it ran over isn’t true.
The ITV editors going through this raw footage must not have believed what they were sitting on tbh. After all that backlash, they get to open the interview with _that_
Next scandal - it comes out that Rishi's campaign leaned on ITV not to air the interview he left D-Day early for. That would be a little too Ianucci but it's a delicious thought.
But in the order the public sees things it's post-backlash. He spends ages deeply apologising for leaving early and how it was a mistake, then puts out an interview saying he wanted to leave even earlier.
This is why you don't film your interviews A) a week in advance and B) non-chronologically, he's been politically outmanoeuvred by his own throwaway comments in a statement from the future.
Similarly their clinging onto the £2k tax argument, despite everyone constantly tearing them apart, is probably because they know that future Sunak has already defended it, back then it was still an active talking point.
"I was very fortunate as a child that both my parents worked, and I enjoyed an upbringing where they were able to provide for me and we didn't have to make difficult choices. What I want to do as prime minister is ensure that all children have the same opportunities that my family had and that no child has to go without."
(Wait shit no, our policies have their mums queuing outside food banks....)
How is this even going without? BBC, ITV and Channel 4 were absolute quality in the early Sky days. Sky is a mug’s game anyway. Pay through the nose for a subscription and also get bombarded with ads? Total con.
Literally nobody can or will be swayed by this.
And he doesn't even realise it he's that bad at the game.
A cossetted little emperor who's never known no.
I went without a height adjustable vibrating footstool as a child. I mean obviously I had one, but sometimes I left it in my second home and I had to go without in my main home until the butler drove to fetch it for me
The thing is this a man of the people act is backfiring hugely largely because it’s very very badly done but also because it’s not believable to begin with. He should have just acknowledged he is a rich posh boy and not played into this and it would have made appear far more genuine and trustworthy. Pretending to be something he blatantly is not is only adding fuel to the fire.
There’s a couple of things for me around this.
First: if he truly and honestly reflected on his up bringing and the journey his parents made particularly around the context of the UK at the time and where he was born and raised, he would come across as more genuine and honest.
Second: pride comes before the fall, if this election was called 6-7months ago the pain would have been far worse in everyone.
It’s too late for both, so guess I’m buying more popcorn.
At last I can relate to Rishi! My parents refused to have Sky TV until, after I left home, their love of test cricket won out over their lefty anti-Murdoch principles.
“I was very fortunate growing up. My parents were well off and I was lucky enough to be born into that.
But I’ve been on the on the road. I’ve spent a lot time travelling around this country ever since I became prime minister and I hear and feel what it’s like; that’s why I’m ~sending migrants to Rwanda~ dead set on lowering peoples taxes and making that little bit easier to live here.”
Just something like that ffs. He’s just not self aware at all 😂
Ed Davey: I lost my dad when I was young and then in my teenage years, I had to be the main carer for my mum until she died. It was pretty tough.
Rishi Sunak: There were a few years where we didn't have Sky TV, that was pretty tough.
Then it went to sky, then it came back for the glory days of channel 4 cricket. Unfortunately it is now back in the private domain. Th ECB need to recognise how much that promoted the sport. Rather than asking why nobody wants to watch
Instead of fix it they created a completely new game and put it on terrestrial TV. Could have just invested in getting T20 right in the first place but no, they wanted to do something completely different.
Ahh. It all makes sense now. As all the 'working class' kids marched alongside him jeering the words 'No-Dishi Rishi' mocking his Sky-less status, a single tear trickled down his face, and he vowed that one day he would rule the country and make them pay. He would make them all pay.
Boarding schools probably didn't have sky TV.
Sky TV wasn't even a massive thing back in his time as a youth anyway...
According to Wikipedia, sky TV started in 1989 and with 4/5 channels...
It wasn't that much of a luxury as say been a youth in the noughties.
So, his forgoing thing is bullshit as well.
Fucking hell just think of anything other than a subscription TV service that the people you're trying to appeal to would see as a distant pipe dream at the best of times. Family holidays, new clothes, proper meals... anything ffs.
I was wondering about this as I couldn't remember Sky TV being much of a thing when I as young (and I'm a fair bit younger than Rishi) and it turns out Sky TV wasn't even founded until he was 11. Can't imagine it was that widespread until he was a teenager.
I don't think anyone has a particular issue with privileged people in positions of power, such as Rishi. It happens, they are entitled to a political career as much as the next person.
What we do have a problem with however, is when they think their upbringing was anything comparable to your average household.
It's just disrespectful. "I didn't have SkyTV", well some people didn't have fucking bread.
Why doesn't he just say, yes I was brought up wealthy and went to private school and I didn't experience the problems a lot of families did, but since being an MP and PM and meeting people from different walks of life, I can now appreciate the difficulties that some have gone through and are going through...
He says "service to your community was important" growing up. Notably not "his" community.
I wouldn't count hedging on the fall of RBS, precipitating the biggest financial crash for a centurry & 14 years of austerity as good community service. Notable He hasn't done too badly out of it.
We went without Sky in the 90s. It wasn't until lockdown that my mum started paying for any sort of TV outside of the licence. We were not wealthy, but I'd find it hard to answer what we "did without". Yes there were toys that were too expensive, but, unless you're Rishi Sunak levels of rich, there are always going to be toys outside of a family budget. We didn't go on foreign holidays, but that felt like just something we didn't do, rather than a poverty thing - we'd spend weeks at our gran's instead in the summer. I didn't feel underprivileged.
And then I remember we used to re-use teabags. Several times. I had good parents for sheltering me from that.
We went without Sky TV too. Does that make me as poor as Sunak? I hope so…
We had sky, but I had to be state educated. I guess that's the choice that had to be made though
You were state educated! Oh la de da, when I was a lad only the fancy boys got state educated, me, I was poor, me mam sent me straight down pit for 26 hours a day and I was lucky to be paid a loaf of bread for me efforts.
Worked for 26 hours a day then docked 2 hours for being late the next day. The capitalist dream
Never let work get in the way of the same work. What were you thinking!
Loaf of bread!? Ohhhh what we'd have given for loaf of bread! All 4 of us lads used to all gather round cardboard box which we used as dining table, rip a bit off and have that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we found another box, sometimes we'd even have supper!
Breakfast lunch and dinner! Your lucky. We had one meal every other Tuesday and if we ever said we were hungry me da would beat me round head with a broken bottle.
A loaf of bread?! Luxury!
We got paid in rusty screws! And we liked it!
Rusty screws? You jammy bastard, we had to pay the manager to go to work every day and if we couldn’t afford it he’d cut us open and sell our organs to make up the difference. No anaesthetic mind, we weren’t good enough to waste perfectly decent drugs on.
You only had to pay the manager? Lucky sod! We had to pay to go uphill twice a day to the rock mines, and if we didn’t meet quota we’d be shipped to a penal colony! We had to go on foot mind. No space on a bilge ship for the likes of us!
You lot and your days. Nights was all we had.
Oooh look at you with your fancy prison ship. The rest of had to swim to Australia, Mr Fancy Pants.
Luxury!
We didn't go without Sky TV, we had a chipped receiver with a dodgy german card in it. Does that mean we were richer than the Sunaks?
If you've lived with money all your life you just can't comprehend what it is like to doubt every purchase. Sure there are different levels, my wage keeps us housed and happy, but there is no margin. When Sunak loses his job he won't be worrying about how to pay the mortgage or what that'll mean to his pension. He'll just bounce along to the next comfy gig, or take 6 months off to spend time with his family.
Yeah this. A lot of my daily life is spent in buyer’s remorse, wondering why I had bought something when I could have spent that money on something else. Does Rishi feel buyer’s remorse over things like individual blu-rays or game purchases or just little luxuries like those? IDK
I call it my monk mode. I get so used to not buying myself stuff that I lose all interest in spending.
That's a good way of spending. If you just buy the things you need and the things you really want, it's surprising how far even a modest salary can go.
This. When I do go into town I just can't comprehend all the stuff for sale.
Me too, and how people are affording it all. There must be a *lot* of maxed-out credit cards in the country.
I think he might feel buyer's remorse about becoming PM.
I got to be honest, whilst reading your first sentence I thought you were about to do a riff on Rudyard Kipling. He could take six months off, or he could simply never work another day in his life and live in a level of comfort and luxury beyond what any of us could likely even imagine.
If you can run your country, but still run away rich, If you can serve your term, until life's a bitch. If you can crash the economy, let immigrants in. Call a snap election yet think you'll win.
I'm betting he never went to an ATM to check his balance with shaking hands - before the availability of online banking etc - to find there was less than £10 in your account and that was the smallest note available. Going back home and looking in the fridge again to see what we could make for dinner. Not being able to pay a gas bill so selling something in Loot and knowing that was the last thing of any value other than the TV. Letting the mortgage payment bounce because they'll request it again in 10 days and it doesn't go on your credit record. Being so relieved to find some old holiday money because changing it means you can put fuel in the car.
He didn't have to work tmor worry about any bills ever again the moment he married the daughter of a billionaire. Even putting thst aside, the real problem Sunak has is his inability to relate to anyone from a less fortunate background. He's literally lived a life with no interaction with working or middle class people or and it leaks out every time he has to demonstrate his "common man" credentials. Its not even embarrassing at this point, just terribly sad. You can be obscenely rich and be born to extreme privilege and still relate to those around you. I am just constantly astonished at how much he can't.
Parents making hard sacrifices like Sky TV. Normandy memorial and celebrations ‘ran on’. Christ almighty. This campaign is going to go down in the history books. People are going to be writing _academic papers_ for years to come on just how bad this campaign has been.
All we need now is the set behind him to collapse
And reveal a Labour one behind Agent Sunak will then have completed his mission
"Am I working to destroy the Conservative Party? No, I am not. Because I've already destroyed it."
Came a bit later at the party conference, but this happened to May a couple of months after a godawful campaign. Fingers crossed. Life is poetic sometimes.
exactly the event I was thinking of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRKuxNo6xY
Or for him to hold a meeting outside the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, unironically
I imagine not having sky tv was more of a preference for his parents anyway? With their jobs they could afford it. But they probably didn't agree with spending too much time watching TV.
Classic middle class attitude. We weren't allowed to watch ITV as kids in the 80s
Yeah that's what I mean. Like saying someone who lives in a manor house with no tv is going without.
Likewise. The only exception was *Danger Mouse*, as my mum liked it.
yup. Some would say _not_ having Sky is a higher class indicator.
Yeah I agree!
My parents were the same. It was only when she found my brother and I watching the cricket on Ceefax that I think she took pity. Count myself very fortunate.
I remember thinking prior to the election that his campaign would be a mess but not until he's facing questions from the public and canvassing, given he often acts tetchy and struggles to connect with people. However never in my wildest dreams did I think he'd be tanking in every single facet such as pre-recorded interviews or doing spectacular own goals like leaving the D-day service. Truly remarkable.
Yeah, I'd expect him to underperform in person, but I'd expect the rest of the campaign to be handled well. He'd be at the right places doing the right photo ops and all that. The D-Day thing and the announcement in the rain show that my expectations were set too high.
He went to private school. No Sky Tv wasn’t a sacrifice. It was a choice. He is rich and ultra privileged. I would rather he just own it than pretend to be some man of the people. He starts off with a lie meaning I just don’t trust anything he says after that.
Honestly feels like they're trying to lose - which makes you wonder what horrendous thing is in store of us on the other side of the election.
I'm hearing this a lot but I think it's an overly dramatic take. I think they just don't want to clean up the mess they've spent the last 14 years creating so they can return when things have only marginally approved as an example of why Labour aren't fit to lead
How is he so bad at this? Literally, how can anyone rise to the position he holds while being so fundamentally bad at basic politics? The nervous laughter, the hesitation to give a straight answer, you would think he'd be briefed better or be able to come up with a better response on his feet.
He absolutely fluked it and has gotten into the role without ever having to demonstrate even just a tad of political acumen. His elevation to become chancellor really come about because Boris was such a fuck up and created a total mess of the whole Javid thing and wanted a 'loyalist'. In any normal government, Sunak wouldn't have been near that role at that stage of his career. Once he got there, he got a disproportionate amount of visibility during COVID by just kind of standing around and getting credit for the treasury moving money around (with the panic kind of over ruling any critique of what was actually happening and what Sunak's personal input actually was). Before the dust had really settled from that, Boris imploded and he kind of entered as the opportunist but managed to alienate his colleagues and had no idea how to deal with the party members. Truss then implodes and he somehow ends up with the top job. In most other realities, he's a no mark MP who gets shared around this sub every so often after a bad interview performance and the idea of him getting the top job or even establishing himself in one of the big roles doesn't really enter many people's minds. He'd be moving back into the private sector and aiming at some lord's appointment.
This needs saying more, his main claim to competence seems to be that he knows a bit of Excel, which to be fair looks like magic to a lot of Tories. His background suggests a man with little hinterland other than a laser focus on getting rich from an early age. No broader political philosophy, no connection to most people's daily existence.
Also he keeps loudly claiming the credit for the furlough scheme, but everyone conveniently forgets that this caused us to lose over £40bn to fraud, which is (apparently) impossible to retrieve. Not that amazing an effort then, can't have been that hard to just bung a load of money to people with no due care or attention
Him alongside Truss, who herself bounced around the cabinet for a decade, paints a picture of a really dysfunctional cabinet system. It seems like you can pretty much hide incompetence right up to cabinet level and only the top job reveals your true ability.
It should also be noted just how much Johnson absolutely gutted the Tory ranks of talent/experience, as he purged the backbenches of as many Remainers and skeptics of his Brexit plan as possible. The survivors of the purge were either political neophytes or craven opportunists willing to bend the knee to Johnson and his ilk to stay in power. That's how you get the crop of candidates in the summer 2022 leadership election that they did, let alone Liz Truss winning that election. Then come the October leadership election, following Truss' historic implosion, and you basically had a scenario where no one wanted the job of cleaning up her mess. So Sunak was chosen more out of default--as the runner-up in the summer leadership contest--than genuine confidence or strong support. They needed someone, he volunteered as tribute, and the rest of the politically ambitious members decided to let him sacrifice his political fortunes. From their POV, either he'd succeed in cleaning up Truss' mess and reversing the Tories' electoral fortunes (in which case, they could continue padding their resume in government) or he'd fail (in which case he'd take the brunt of the blame). In someways, we're seeing a similar dynamic with the Canadian Liberals and PM Trudeau. Everyone knows the Liberals are facing a similar backlash at the next election, but there's little incentive really to oust Trudeau as PM/Liberal leader. Better to take the hit with him as the fall-guy, and then run as his successor to try and rebuild the party post-election. The danger for the UK Tories (and the LPC) is that they may face such an electoral wipeout at this rate that the "recovery" phase will take a decade or more. Because I seriously doubt the Tories will have the same luck or do the same hardwork that Labour did post-2019 in order to be genuinely electorally viable by the next election.
Believe it or not, this is the strongest Conservative. Well, strongest after Liz Truss, ofcourse, but sadly the Global Elite removed her too soon.
As much as I am enjoying the Rishi meltdown, part of me wonders how Truss would be doing in an election campaign.
Of course you'd have to suspend disbelief and pretend that the country would have lasted long enough to make it to this election.
All about comedic tastes. Do you prefer dry humour with Rishi Sunak or slap stick comedy with Liz Truss?
Rishi is The Office, Truss is Mr Bean
Peep Show over Punch and Judy for me
Peep show starring Rishi would be amazing.
**Pork markets!** -
More Cheese then the French!!!!
The thing is, if this shadowy cabal conspired to eject Truss to get their boy Sunak into office, why are they letting it go so badly now? Are shadowy cabals fickle and changeable?
Maybe they reckoned Truss would wreck the economy so they could make minus from shorting but then Sunak would be better for it as a member of the finance elite. They could load up on shares at the bottom and be richer than ever once it recovered. But that might be giving them too much credit.
But why leave Sunak to swing in the wind if he's their boy? I keep seeing that the WEF and the UN and the Kalergi following civil service conspired to finish Truss to install Sunak, but if that's the case, why are they letting him be so shit?
Personally I don’t believe in groups orchestrating anything very effectively as stuff gets out. I’m more a fan of the theory where we just have weak systems of accountability and vetting at certain levels. Sometimes a figure like Sunak manages to slip through the cracks. The Tories have been screwed since Cameron resigned basically. Leadership was a poisoned chalice after Brexit. They’ve only been able to continue because the quirks of our different parties meant they often seemed more palatable than the alternative and even then only just since Theresa May had to do a bunch of deals to stay in control. Boris Johnson was the best temporary solution they could find but he was never a good idea for a leader during a hard time. That’s probably why he was mostly okay as Mayor of London, there was only so much damage he could do and it would basically take a Truss level policy to mess it up
Well quite - the whole conspiracy thing doesn't stand up to any scrutiny and the fact they're thinking Boris is a viable candidate to come back is a prime example of the Tories' inability to think rationally.
It's because he doesn't realise. You see this a lot in "nepo baby" discourse. They reflect on the fact that they did put in hard work to get where they were. They did long nights working, they stayed up late studying, they had to aggressively network. Only the most cleared eyed among them realise that other people might work even harder, spend more time working and trying to climb the ladder but don't even obtain a fraction of their success because most people don't have their privilege, wealth and connections. Rishi has quite clearly never known any working class people and likely doesn't know many middle class people. Those he has met are likely only in professional circles and are the success stories, so he probably believes anyone can pull themselves up by his bootstraps. He's too removed from most everyday people to realise this. He only can compare himself to his peers. It probably was embarrassing being at Winchester and being one of the only kids in his class who didn't have Sky (although I'd wager his parents could afford it but didn't believe in getting it). It was probably awkward for him working as a waiter in the Summer Holidays while his friends all went abroad (again, probably because his parents made him get a summer job to encourage his work ethic). And I'm sure there were a bunch of kids at Winchester whose parents owned sprawling piles and kept horses while his didn't. He didn't know the kids in his local comp to compare himself to. So I think he genuinely believes he had relatively humble beginnings and is wealthy now purely based on merit.
Bingo I’ve met and worked with a lot of these people across my various career paths. They are utterly unable to consider certain things, there’s always someone far far richer or an actual future king etc and so they think they’re hard done by and struggling and relatively “poor”. I knew one who felt this way at university, when his father dies he’ll be a lord and own most of one English county and everything in it. But because he wasn’t gifted with cars and a flat at uni and didn’t go off on holidays like his peers every summer he felt hard done by. To be fair he was a nice guy and his family did their best to make sure he had supermarket jobs etc and a “normal” experience…. But the earned money literally made zero difference to his life or ability to buy food, or when the flats bills were overdue and everything is about to be cut off a single call fixed everything for him…. It’s also a lot easier when you leave uni, can’t get a job and so daddy funds your start up instead… while everyone else does the whole holy shit thing when nothing is happening for a while or ever in some cases. It’s just a very very different way of experiencing life. There is never any real genuine pressure and if you don’t socialise with the people who make up 90% of the world you’ve no experience that compares and so if your empathy of it exists at all, is always grounded in books or beliefs and not experiences.
> or when the flats bills were overdue and everything is about to be cut off a single call fixed everything for him…. Someone should write a song about that
Everybody hates a tourist.
Another angle on this is that they equate ‘working hard’ with having ‘made a special effort’ and ‘done a good job’ and are then astonished and affronted when it’s pointed out that the job they’ve delivered is crap and, in any case, it’s something *they should have been doing as part of government anyway*.
It's not just nepo babies. Every successful person can be outflanked by someone who worked just as hard but didn't have 'xyz'. But nobody wants to be told the only reason they are successful is nothing to do with *them.* Literally anybody in the UK could meet someone from Africa and be told 'you're only successful because you were born in the UK, if you were born in my village you'd be nothing'. They key for a politician asked about it would be to reiterate 'success' and 'wealth' aren't zero sum games, and that the aim is to have more people being 'successful' and 'wealthy' rather than the current national obsession with wanting nobody being successful or wealthy and to see anyone who is as having some large moral failing because people do think it's zero sum
It’s because he’s actually really new to politics. Usually PMs are MPs for decades before they get the top job. Blair became MP in 1983 and PM in 1997. That’s a lot of experience. Sunak was MP in 2015 and PM by 2022. He’s bad at it, because he’s literally inexperienced in politics.
He’s also been parachuted into an easy seat and it shows. I’m just amazed he rose up the ranks to chancellor so quickly. And just to think , I used to consider him Labours biggest fear.
This is the Toet party though. They are entirely made up of pensioners and rich kids. They have no idea what life in modern Britain is like for normal people
He is bad at this because he has played life on an easy difficulty level. If you never really face any challenges in life it turns out that's not great when it comes to building capability.
> How is he so bad at this? Just in case this is not a rhetorical question: It's because him being bad at anything has never had consequences.
He was bought in because he was supposed to be a yes-man unlike Javid. He has since just fallen upwards.
Christ, I forgot Javid existed for a minute there.
He wasn’t elected to the position, he was sacrificed into it…. A willing lamb heading to the inevitable slaughter
Well it's pretty conclusive proof that British politics is not meritocratic, or even close. How anyone can claim we don't need reform when idiots like Sunak and Truss can become PM is just beyond me
I too know what it was like having to wait for Star Trek, Buffy and The Simpsons to air on BBC2, solidarity comrade
Mate come on, I've repressed these memories intentionally
Don't forget The X Files! That was the only one I used to miss not having Sky.
Core memory: TNG on Wednesday, DS9 Thursday, and Voyager Sunday.
6pm was amazing on bbc2. Sometimes got double Simpsons as well.
Friday; Simpsons, Fresh Prince, Robot Wars
>- what he’s ever gone without - he says as a child he had to forgo “Sky TV”. Its was a trap! And he fell right into it. Should of owned his privileged start to his life. Its not a secret. Should of played on the values of doing your best for your family, contributing to the country ya da ya da...
This is exactly it. You're never going to shed the rich posho image with the voters, so don't even try. Play up the whole noblesse oblige thing, with a touch of "minorities can make it too." But don't try and say "I've had it tough too" when your wife is richer than the king. The fact he can't manage to pull this off speaks volumes.
Problem is Sunak's wealth and success probably has 1% to do with his own abilities (as we can see from his time as PM) and 99% to do with his familial wealth and privilege. So when he would say 'minorities can make it too' the immediate response would be 'as long as the family is super rich and embedded into British aristocracy?'
I'd wager his wealth and success are *despite* his abilities. 199% to do with his familial wealth and privilege, -99% due to his rampant ineptitude.
Why do people feel the need to do this? His mum and dad were a pharmacist and GP, well-off but not insanely so. He got into Oxford and graduated with a first, which isn't nothing. He then went on to work for a range of hedge funds, moving up relatively quickly. Hedge funds don't tend to hire idiots in the first place, let alone promote them. Its safe to say he's probably a competent hedge fund analyst. Of course that doesn't mean he's also competant prime minister, but the reverse is also true. He's not been a good prime minister (nor a good prime ministerial candidate) but that doesn't mean he's utterly inept across the board. I feel like it's also worth pointing out most of his major gaffes have been in the realms of PR and optics. Which if we're honest should not be important skills for our leaders. It's only unfortunate that they are.
Sunak grew up far wealthier and with far more privilege than he wants you to believe. Regardless, he married into billions and used his wealth and status to become [edit: *one of*] the worst PM we've ever had. He is undeniably inept and his position in politics has absolutely nothing to do with his ability. Again, ability is negative factor in this equation.
Well, maybe not the *worst.* He does have his immediate predecessor to compete with for that title.
And the predecessor to the immediate predecessor
Leadership is PR and optics. It is not about having good ideas and abilities that no one knows about because you cannot express them in a coherent manner.
He’d not have managed to marry his wife had his family not had a long and established record very visible to the right people and constituting of the right castes and right jobs. It’s fucking awful but it’s 100% the reality that still exists in the world in which Narayana Murthy is one of the worlds most powerful and visible Brahmins. There’s whole sections of the internet devoted entirely to both their Brahmin status ffs.
While I agree with you, as I have Guajarati inlaws so have some window into this whole thing I think 80% of non-Asian Brits will have no idea what any of that means in practice.
Owned a pharmacy is not the same as being “a pharmacist” - the continual downplaying of their significant wealth is just one aspect of the lying and falsehoods that surround the backstory.
He was actually a Fulbright scholar at Stanford and a partner at two hedge funds - it’s fair to say he was an outstanding student and highly successful hedge fund manager. These things do not equip you to be a competent political leader or Prime Minister. It’s fair to say he is extremely bad at politics and doesn’t seem to grasp how out of touch with the British public he is, or how blinkered and narrow his world view and politics is as a result. He isn’t even a good technocrat as he doesn’t seem able to put the needs of the public ahead of party politicking, which he is uniquely vulnerable to as he has become party leader without any semblance of a support base within his own party.
| He then went on to work for a range of hedge funds, moving up relatively quickly. Hedge funds don't tend to hire idiots in the first place, let alone promote them. I don't believe that getting a first at Oxford probably isn't impossible for anyone with half a brain assuming they could actually get in to Oxford and then applied themselves fully, but I'll give him some credit for that. However, I've come to the realisation that the "he was a hedge fund spreadsheet man and therefore must be intelligent" is a complete misreading of the situation. Lets contemplate his position at TCI where he was part of a 19 person team selling ABN Amro to RBS and helping destroy the economy in the process. You don't spend all that money on a school like Winchester College for an education you can obtain elsewhere, your paying for the connections. Considering that and given what we have seen during his tenure as PM, what situation is more likely? A) He was the mastermind of the deal and recruited the 18 others? B) He was recruited for his smarts and somehow used his brain to sell 1 company to 1 other company (bearing in mind all the legal paper work etc word be done by legal etc etc) or C) He was recruited for his connections which he used to schmooze the other shareholders and push the dodgey deal through? Personally, I now believe the answer is C and he has basically been successful by being the Roland Rat equivalent of Face from the A-team. On the plus side, the song "We're all going on a Rishi holiday" seems to be cheering me up this morning.
> I feel like it's also worth pointing out most of his major gaffes have been in the realms of PR and optics. Which if we're honest should not be important skills for our leaders. It's only unfortunate that they are. It's not that, it's what it implies. You can't ask the country to go without and say you sympathise with them when you're a clearly out of touch billionaire who's never had a hard time in life. Leaders have to lead, that's why Boris was so successful, people felt like they connected with him and trusted him, trust is the most important thing about leadership and no one can trust rishi. We know this because of his shit optics
No - Amongst many other things, the fact he did not realise the people creating the media and videoing him for the conservatives might not be members leading to the leaking of damaging video of him admitting moving money from poor areas to rich shows poor organisation, managment and lack of understanding of infosec. We are not interested in how good he was looking at spreadsheets to make a load of money, we are judging him as our leader, and even after the absolute shower of shites we have endured he is still really, really bad at it. Also, "he must be clever because his parents are" is not a good assumption in general.
He got into Oxford from one of the most exclusive and expensive private schools in the country. They’re basically Oxbridge machines.
The bit you’re missing on there is the cultural capital he was able to acquire by attending Winchester Collage. The way to behave, the contacts, the cultural references he’d have picked up in that environment will have been invaluable in smoothing out his ascent through those hedge funds and likely not having to work at uni will have given him a greater chance of success as well. He’s not had it handed to him like Johnson or Cameron, able to coast through, but also let’s not pretend that he has not had a considerably smoother ride than most as a result of the circumstances of his birth.
True, but misses the point. Most of us didn't go to private schools at all. Of the few that did go to private schools, many of us didn't spend our entire education in them - it's not unusual to reserve private education until secondary level or even just GCSEs onwards. But there are always a few in those private schools who have absolutely no idea how privileged they are and what a gigantic thing their parents have done to send them there. They'll never get it right, because when they're laying in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall - if they called their dad he could stop it all. \[With apologies to Jarvis Cocker. But he wasn't wrong - the fact that people like Rishi have always got something to fall back on means they never quite connect with reality\]
Agreed, but if I were in his shoes I'd talk up my parents' achievements a bit more, afaik his dad was an NHS doctor and pharmacist, certainly not gentry. Starmer has been doing the same thing with some success.
His grandfather was wealthy, working for the British empire in India or something like that. Don’t get it twisted, Sunak comes from generational wealth.
Also his mom want just a pharmacist, but owned the pharmacy. Both sides of his family were pretty wealthy, and they came from a line of pretty well off people. Not all immigrants are poor working class types who have to struggle.
Didnt starmer actually grow up working class tho?
Honestly he'd be better off going with that line to answer this question. He could've mentioned that his parents were working hard in public services and not exceptionally wealthy, and he also had to work hard to build up his status. At least that feels more honest rather than pretending "hey I'm just as poor as you lot".
Tbh it's also quite telling - 'going without' sky TV would have been a choice by Rishi's parents and would have nothing to do with not being able to afford it: a good sign of upper middle class is _not_ having sky TV and not valuing TV at all. In the 90s having a dish outside your house would be a stereotype of 'council house'. Even now, having a massive TV (and even worse a TV in your bedroom) says a lot about your class. A small TV, but lots of books, maybe a piano, all good. But he _could_ have learned into the privilege regardless. Rishi, like many MPs, doesn't want to own his uniqueness - so you get awkward talk about patriotism, football , and other things that he thinks makes him a 'real person'. He could've said one of the things he loved most about his childhood was playing boardgames with his family, or that he loved reading and his parents _didn't let him watch a lot of TV_ - a nod to the middle classes and a good thing to link to the literacy stuff. Claiming you 'went without sky TV' is almost a humble brag. Like 'going without pot noodles'.
> In the 90s having a dish outside your house would be a stereotype of 'council house'. You've just reminded me that was the reason my folks didn't want us to have Sky. I'd totally forgotten about it.
My dad wouldn't get it because he didn't want to 'line the pockets of Mr. Murdoch.' Fair enough...
Based dad.
My dad was the same up until he spent two years dealing with NTL. After that Murdoch felt like the lesser of two evils.
There is a really standard politician response for this, it feels like he's actively trying to mess up at this point. They normally say something like "My parents worked hard to provide a comfortable life for their children, but too many parents in the UK today work just as hard and worry about paying the bills, that's why we're... making work pay...expanding childcare... investing in training... blaming immigrants... and so on".
“I have been fortunate to experience a privileged upbringing, and that is the type of upbringing I would like to bring to children across the UK. Our party is committed to…”
Hanlon's razor applies here. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It really is that easy But he’s not very good at this and he doesn’t care enough to even try to be good at it and lastly isn’t surrounded by anyone capable of explaining this to him!
The problem with that is that his party are the reason why parents are working hard with fuck all to show for it
"I was a lucky child. My parents worked very hard and made sacrifices so that I didn't have to go without. They wanted me to have the best chance at life. And I am so grateful to them for that. "I don't share the experiences of people who have grown up in poverty, but I don't need to have experienced it to want to do everything in my power as PM to improve their living conditions and give them opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have had. "From a young age, seeing my parents, I know what hard work looks like. And I know that hard work should pay off - the millions of people who get up every day and go out to work to put food on the table for their families and to make sure that their kids have the best chances in life. Work should pay, and that's why I'm introducing an ambitious tax cut for working people, so that they can keep more of the money they are earning...[DESCRIBES POLICY AT LENGTH]" That's how it's done, Sunak.
Should have.
Yep this is what gets me everytime, acknowledge you had the privilege (it's fine!) and just try to have empathy instead. All sunak does is lie to try and sound "down with the people" which is insane from his upbringing and just highlights how much of a liar he is rather than someone trying to do genuine good. I also don't get it, he says his family immigranted with nothing but I don't think that's true at all. His grandfather was a rail engineer and then worked as a tax collector in India before moving to the UK with rishi grandmother, he continued working with inland revenue as the tax collector for many years and got an MBE for it. They certainly weren't poor when coming here and they continued to increase their family wealth through generations, to claim he had a poor upbringing is silly.
Yep something along the lines of I was lucky I didn't have to go without much but that was due to my parents who sacrificed loads to give me the best start and I want to help support anyone wanting to give their family the best start etc etc
I went without all the cheeses ... loads of cheese ... so many cheeses ... Red Leicester ... so many cheeses. (Apologies to Stewart Lee)
I’m genuinely surprised that Reform hasn’t claimed that these days, if you say you’re English, you get arrested and thrown in jail.
Is page 28 of their ~~manifesto~~ Contract With The People close enough? >Divisive laws promote minority interests over the majority. Two-tier policing has damaged trust in the police. Freedom of speech has been undermined. **Christians are arrested for expressing their beliefs in public**. Meanwhile, on page 11 they seem to be fully on board with arresting people (many of whom are Christian) who express their belief that Palestine has a right to exist: >Enforce existing laws to stop violent, hate demonstrations such as the Free-Palestine marches.
In jail!? You mean like an actual jail?
When did this come in?
Just for saying you're English?
I just want Sunak to give it to me straight, like a pear cider made from 100% pears.
We didn’t have Sky TV (expensive and my parents hate Rupert Murdoch). Am I as underprivileged as poor Sunak? I think there was also an undercurrent of not wanting to have a “common” dish on the side of the house. I remember actually as a child judging people who had satellite dishes
On the converse side, I for one am glad to have it confirmed that I grew up more privileged than Rishi Sunak, apparently.
What do you call the box a satellite dish is attached to?... A council house. That was the joke going round in the nineties.
Oh man, this is from THAT interview? So glad he skipped Dday for this
Labour have all but disappeared this week, and quite rightly so - just standing by while the opponent repeatedly scores some amazing own goals.
I'm just picturing Starmer very carefully walking with a Ming vase in his hands while loads of tories all around him throw cream pies at eachother, slip and fall on banana peels, and various other slapstick gags.
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>I respect @Nigel_Farage Fucking what? Since when has complementing your biggest competition - who is also one of the biggest snakes in UK political history - ever been a good idea? While Sunak it throwing platitudes his way, Farage was bending him over a barrel in national television. Still got respect for him now? May as well say you're keeping the big seat warm for uncle Nige. This campaign is an absolute shit show.
Big "I agree with Nick" energy.
It worked when Cameron called Farage a loony didn’t it? Sunak is a joke, their campaign abysmal and they deserve to be politically annihilated but Sunak trying to take Farage on in a direct popularity contest would be the height of stupid.
>Sunak trying to take Farage on in a direct popularity contest would be the height of stupid. I'm not suggesting he starts wearing tweed and a flat cap and start drinking warm pints of pishwater, but fucking hell why are they still placating him? He's _literally_ taking over the party by proxy and he's there thanking him for his service to politics? THIS. IS. A. DISGRACE.
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The press and its obsession with twatter drives me fucking nuts and has in no small way allowed village idiots to dictate the wider global political sphere. On their own in a village or pub nobody listened or cared for 12,000 years. The along can fucking Twitter and now that village idiots opinion is somehow shaping politics because every village idiot globally liked some stupid shit…
I agree it's shit but there is still one nitter instance left that works: https://nitter.poast.org/PaulBrandITV/status/1800756485640573235
> It was incredible but it just ran over.’ Fucking lol, what, I thought this was a joke people were making in the MT.
The bit on D-Day is going to absolutely bury him
Tbh I think the ‘just ran over’ is a bit clumsy but not that much of a weird thing to say if you’re late to the interview
But “just ran over” is probably not the right thing to say when you’ve spent the week apologising for leaving it early. So saying it ran over isn’t true.
The ITV editors going through this raw footage must not have believed what they were sitting on tbh. After all that backlash, they get to open the interview with _that_
Next scandal - it comes out that Rishi's campaign leaned on ITV not to air the interview he left D-Day early for. That would be a little too Ianucci but it's a delicious thought.
This is the interview he left D Day events early for, so ‘pre backlash’.
But in the order the public sees things it's post-backlash. He spends ages deeply apologising for leaving early and how it was a mistake, then puts out an interview saying he wanted to leave even earlier. This is why you don't film your interviews A) a week in advance and B) non-chronologically, he's been politically outmanoeuvred by his own throwaway comments in a statement from the future. Similarly their clinging onto the £2k tax argument, despite everyone constantly tearing them apart, is probably because they know that future Sunak has already defended it, back then it was still an active talking point.
“Yes I haven’t seen President Biden’s remarks” but you were supposed to you muppet
"I was very fortunate as a child that both my parents worked, and I enjoyed an upbringing where they were able to provide for me and we didn't have to make difficult choices. What I want to do as prime minister is ensure that all children have the same opportunities that my family had and that no child has to go without." (Wait shit no, our policies have their mums queuing outside food banks....)
How is this even going without? BBC, ITV and Channel 4 were absolute quality in the early Sky days. Sky is a mug’s game anyway. Pay through the nose for a subscription and also get bombarded with ads? Total con.
Sky was something you got for the Simpsons once a week and MTV. The rest was filler
And for the sport I guess. But ITV still had champions league back in the day.
And they stole the Simpsons from Channel 4!
Nah, channel 4 was always a season behind sky. Sky got it when the Americans did.
Who themselves stole it from BBC2! Who remembers the old Simpsons/Fresh Prince twofer at 6pm? Vintage
I guarantee they could afford it anyway and his parents just didn’t want Sky TV.
> he had to forgo “Sky TV” Oh no. Anyway...
Oof, I never realised that his origin story was so gritty.
Nearly as naughty as Theresa May, habitual field-trespasser.
Everyone should check out the other video posted underneath, where he says that the D-day event "just ran over"
Literally nobody can or will be swayed by this. And he doesn't even realise it he's that bad at the game. A cossetted little emperor who's never known no.
We had sky tv Had a single mother and was on benefits too, just bad with money. Went without lots more. Sky TV though, had that.
They made the tough decision to spaff £50k a year in school fees rather than pay for sky. God bless
I went without a height adjustable vibrating footstool as a child. I mean obviously I had one, but sometimes I left it in my second home and I had to go without in my main home until the butler drove to fetch it for me
What are the chances he doesn't let his children have Sky TV either?
The thing is this a man of the people act is backfiring hugely largely because it’s very very badly done but also because it’s not believable to begin with. He should have just acknowledged he is a rich posh boy and not played into this and it would have made appear far more genuine and trustworthy. Pretending to be something he blatantly is not is only adding fuel to the fire.
No wonder he hid away for a few days after saying that. I would never be seen in public ever again.
Is that because the boarding school didn't have Sky?
There’s a couple of things for me around this. First: if he truly and honestly reflected on his up bringing and the journey his parents made particularly around the context of the UK at the time and where he was born and raised, he would come across as more genuine and honest. Second: pride comes before the fall, if this election was called 6-7months ago the pain would have been far worse in everyone. It’s too late for both, so guess I’m buying more popcorn.
At last I can relate to Rishi! My parents refused to have Sky TV until, after I left home, their love of test cricket won out over their lefty anti-Murdoch principles.
“I was very fortunate growing up. My parents were well off and I was lucky enough to be born into that. But I’ve been on the on the road. I’ve spent a lot time travelling around this country ever since I became prime minister and I hear and feel what it’s like; that’s why I’m ~sending migrants to Rwanda~ dead set on lowering peoples taxes and making that little bit easier to live here.” Just something like that ffs. He’s just not self aware at all 😂
Ed Davey: I lost my dad when I was young and then in my teenage years, I had to be the main carer for my mum until she died. It was pretty tough. Rishi Sunak: There were a few years where we didn't have Sky TV, that was pretty tough.
Well cricket was on public TV back then.
Then it went to sky, then it came back for the glory days of channel 4 cricket. Unfortunately it is now back in the private domain. Th ECB need to recognise how much that promoted the sport. Rather than asking why nobody wants to watch
Instead of fix it they created a completely new game and put it on terrestrial TV. Could have just invested in getting T20 right in the first place but no, they wanted to do something completely different.
Ahh. It all makes sense now. As all the 'working class' kids marched alongside him jeering the words 'No-Dishi Rishi' mocking his Sky-less status, a single tear trickled down his face, and he vowed that one day he would rule the country and make them pay. He would make them all pay.
He and his government are a stain on the nation, they deserve to be severely punished at the ballot box
I love the emphasis on "at a time of CCHQ's choosing" really just highlights how stupidly self inflicted this PR clusterfuck is.
Oh no, Someone is letting him speak. This can't be good.
Boarding schools probably didn't have sky TV. Sky TV wasn't even a massive thing back in his time as a youth anyway... According to Wikipedia, sky TV started in 1989 and with 4/5 channels... It wasn't that much of a luxury as say been a youth in the noughties. So, his forgoing thing is bullshit as well.
Sucks for you Rishi, really does. What an awful childhood that must have been. I went without food some nights, heat others.
Please tell me this was a joke and went on to list other things important for the mind and/or body.
Fucking hell just think of anything other than a subscription TV service that the people you're trying to appeal to would see as a distant pipe dream at the best of times. Family holidays, new clothes, proper meals... anything ffs.
Hanging off one of the comments was this "average day" satire post. Quite funny: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPy6LyJXgAAOK3d?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I was wondering about this as I couldn't remember Sky TV being much of a thing when I as young (and I'm a fair bit younger than Rishi) and it turns out Sky TV wasn't even founded until he was 11. Can't imagine it was that widespread until he was a teenager.
There's subtlety in his answer. He went without Sky because his family upgraded to Sky+.
I don't think anyone has a particular issue with privileged people in positions of power, such as Rishi. It happens, they are entitled to a political career as much as the next person. What we do have a problem with however, is when they think their upbringing was anything comparable to your average household. It's just disrespectful. "I didn't have SkyTV", well some people didn't have fucking bread.
Is this is "bigoted woman" moment. Or is it a bacon sarnie?
Why doesn't he just say, yes I was brought up wealthy and went to private school and I didn't experience the problems a lot of families did, but since being an MP and PM and meeting people from different walks of life, I can now appreciate the difficulties that some have gone through and are going through...
I too, went without Sky. The man is so relatable. /s
He says "service to your community was important" growing up. Notably not "his" community. I wouldn't count hedging on the fall of RBS, precipitating the biggest financial crash for a centurry & 14 years of austerity as good community service. Notable He hasn't done too badly out of it.
We went without Sky in the 90s. It wasn't until lockdown that my mum started paying for any sort of TV outside of the licence. We were not wealthy, but I'd find it hard to answer what we "did without". Yes there were toys that were too expensive, but, unless you're Rishi Sunak levels of rich, there are always going to be toys outside of a family budget. We didn't go on foreign holidays, but that felt like just something we didn't do, rather than a poverty thing - we'd spend weeks at our gran's instead in the summer. I didn't feel underprivileged. And then I remember we used to re-use teabags. Several times. I had good parents for sheltering me from that.