In 1886, the Liberal British statesman Joseph Chamberlain said, “In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.” In recent years, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been credited with saying much more – that a week is a long time in politics.
But in the age of Twitter, handling every moment the wrong way could trap you for eternity, as would the Chancellor of the UK Exchequer Rishi Sunak, who is the frontrunner to succeed troubled Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Looked like Not long ago, the British media had run out of knives; Conservative MPs were desperate for Johnson’s blood after stories emerged of restless parties at 10 Downing Street with wine and cheese while the nation was under a severe lockdown. Covid-affected grandparents are dying, unable to hug their grandchildren for the last time; Marriages were postponed to comply with attendance rules; and families could not gather for meaningful celebrations; But Johnson and his friends and allies continued to live as if they lived in another country, where the rules enacted by the Johnson-led cabinet did not apply. Sunak had the misfortune of being seen at an apparently impromptu celebration with Johnson. Last week, the Metropolitan Police fined them both, with more fines expected, as were other violations.
Presumably, Sunak has suffered collateral damage, but this is the least of his concerns.
When Johnson’s troubles escalated, the Tories (as the Conservatives are called in the UK) looked around for a possible replacement. The craze looked promising. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was not universally popular, and an old speech in which she suggested that Yorkshire tea was grown in Yorkshire was re-emerging. Home Secretary Priti Patel was busy trying to raise her reputation as the minister most capable of closing British doors to asylum seekers and refugees whose life stories resembled those of their own parents. But Sunak was seen as a safe pair of hands: a son of immigrants who was privately educated, worked at an investment bank and a hedge fund, and showed no sign of scam.
That was then. The revelations of Sanak’s wife Akshata Murthy’s tax status upset him. The daughter of Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, she holds an Indian passport. While in the UK, he had declared his residential status as ‘Non-Domicile’ (or Non-DOM) to reduce his tax liability. What Murthy did was completely legal. This is a provision under which foreign income is not taxed for people who do not ordinarily live in the UK. In Murthy’s case, that income is significant—by some estimates in the British media, she is wealthier than the Queen. If she had paid taxes on dividend income from her foreign investments, her tax bill would have increased by millions of pounds.
Again, what he did was not illegal, but doing it when you marry the country’s finance minister (known as the Chancellor of the Exchequer) seemed odd, to put it mildly. This, at a time when the government was withdrawing the benefits and reliefs given to deal with the hardships imposed by the pandemic, made the situation worse. Feeling gone, like Caesar’s wife, the chancellor’s wife must also be above suspicion.
There can be scams in politics. Cover-ups usually make it worse. And the Sunak team’s immediate reaction was clumsy: it was suggested that Murthy would have to give up her Indian passport if she surrendered her non-DOM status, which simply was not the case. Foreigners legally resident in the UK can have non-DOM status, as can UK citizens. The statue has since relinquished its non-dom status, but the damage has been done. Sunak also has other issues to worry about, such as the number of years he had a US green card (permanent residency) after becoming chancellor, and his undisclosed foreign investments.
Sunak’s supporters believe Johnson is spreading all this information to tarnish Sunak’s future, and some Tories think it has worked. Johnson is enjoying a Churchillian moment, as his loyalists warn against changing leadership while the Ukraine war continues (which the UK is not fighting). Such concerns for Ukraine are touching, given the government’s inability to admit Ukrainian refugees and its pathetic policy to send other asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, in defiance of international norms if not the law.
It can be tempting to think that Sunak is being chosen for his ethnicity. But his being of Indian origin is accidental. Like Patel, or like Shailesh Vara before, Sunak is elected from an extraordinarily secure Tory constituency and doesn’t need Asian votes to win. He won Richmond in northern England, where the last time anyone other than a Conservative was elected was in 1885 (except for a Liberal victory in 1906).
British voters may not necessarily be angry with the rich, but they dislike hypocrisy. Johnson himself is most to blame for this, but the cunning dodge he is, survives. or think. But the knives are likely to intensify if the British local elections thrash the Tories badly in May. Sunak wishes he was more transparent and kept his family’s financial matters clean. As things stand, he will be lucky to retain his position a month from now.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. Read Salil’s previous mint columns at www.livemint.com/saliltripathi