Quitting won’t restore Rishi Sunak’s moral authority or integrity

Quitting Boris Johnson’s cabinet at a point of maximum weakness for the PM was simply a bid for the top job later

It’s very difficult for Rishi Sunak, former chancellor and possible future Conservative prime minister, to understand what life must be like for the rest of us.

More than most members of government, he is wealthy enough in his own right, married to a woman richer than the Queen, and son-in-law of a billionaire. As we know from one of his vanity videos, he does know how to use a debit card at a petrol station, and his idea of a cost of living crisis must be the maintenance bills on his estate in Yorkshire, one of a number of pleasant homes he has to spend time in.

As is the way with the mega-rich, he makes and his family makes use of tax-efficient ways to prop up their vast wealth, and his wife was, until relatively recently, non-domiciled for tax purposes. This was entirely  lawful, but also not something that Sunak went out of his way to tell the general public and the Tory members who liked him so much.

As second favourite to succeed Boris Johnson, and possibly the first person of colour to be prime minister, he seems to have regained some of his past popularity. Showing the courage to quit second from the cabinet, closely behind Sajid Javid in what might have been a coordinated assassination, may have also endeared him to some weary of the PM’s cowardly, buck-passing, evasive ways.

Yet we have perhaps forgotten too easily exactly why “Dishy Rishi”, the architect of the furlough scheme and saviour of the lockdown economy,  fell so rapidly from grace. He went from hero to zero because The Independent revealed the non-dom status of his wife, which hugely reduced potential tax bills, and people suddenly saw him as a hypocrite. When the story broke, in April, Sunak considered resignation, until persuaded out of it by Boris Johnson, ironically enough.

Such facts of life about Sunak make him an unappetising candidate for the leadership, despite his undoubted clarity of vision and ability. A government led by Sunak would certainly be more competent and honest than one led by Johnson, but that is no longer the choice, given the very wide field of potential candidates.

As Douglas Hurd, Eton-educated landed gentry, once reacted to snarky criticism of his background when campaigning against the more proletarian John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher: “I thought I was running for leadership of the Tory party, not some demented Marxist sect."

True enough, and the Tory party is more tolerant of vulgar displays of wealth than others. Yet its social makeup has changed under Johnson and acquired a more populist appeal and an awful lot more working class voters.

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A few months ago, it was asked whether an absurdly rich man such as Sunak could be chancellor of the exchequer, having to make tough decisions about taxing the poor, benefits, free school meals, nurses’ pay and so on. (His successor, the rich Nadhim Zahawi will face similar complaints). It will be even more difficult for a man such as Sunak to ask the country to make sacrifices, exercise restraint in pay bargaining or cope with a recession.

Sunak may also be playing a bit of a political game here. Just as he must try and understand us, we too must get into his mind. For example, he probably wants to impress his father-in-law by attaining high office and fame, givens that he’ll never be a billionaire. So he’s not going to be content with a lesser job than he has now. Given what he went through in April about non-doms, it’s hard to believe he’d want to run for the top job. It’s also apparent he was at odds with the PM about economic policy and was at risk of getting the sack.

So it seems he has paired up with The Saj to carry on his work as chancellor, with Javid as PM, and in harmony on a more traditional Cameronite approach to the public finances. Quitting Johnson’s cabinet at this point of maximum weakness for the PM wasn’t so much a bid for the top job now but maybe later, succeeding Javid when the time is ripe. Nothing wrong with any of that, but let’s not ever forget how secretive he has been about his private finances.