Rishi Sunak really let the cat out of the bag when he was filmed boasting to a bunch of wealthy Tory voters about how he defunded northern working class towns and diverted those funds to places like Tunbridge Wells, which is one of the most affluent towns in the country. He took from people who desperately needed that money, people who are queuing up at foodbanks and will soon be using warm banks, and he gave that money to people who will never need for anything.
If this doesn't make you sick to your stomach, it's because you've never known struggle. If it does make you sick to your stomach and you've previously voted Tory, it's time to have a word with yourself.
When us lefties tell you the art of Toryism is taking from the poor and giving to the rich, like a reverse Robin Hood, this is exactly the shit we're talking about. The Tories' levelling up plan was quite literally a levelling down plan. Every slogan the Tories come up with is empty fluff or Orwellian double-speak. Every bit of poverty we've experienced over the last 12 years was by design.
If you doubt any of what I'm saying, please take a look and see for yourself:
EXCLUSIVE: In a leaked video, Rishi Sunak boasted to Conservative Party members that he was prepared to take public money out of “deprived urban areas” to help wealthy towns.@REWearmouth reports: https://t.co/uZMpjKm6rG pic.twitter.com/07sSzDksMT
— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) August 5, 2022
If you voted Tory, either you're one of the people who agrees with Sunak's behaviour, in which case you're disgusting, or you're one of the people who were duped, in which case this should be a learning moment. This right here is what happens when gullible types swoon at a posh accent and elect the "clever" person to rule over them because they've subconsciously made the leap that private education = talent and leadership.
The biggest problem with this logic - and there are several problems - is that one of the key leadership skills required of any prime minister who is serious about addressing the structural unfairness in our society is empathy. And people like Rishi Sunak do not have empathy, not in that way.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if Rishi Sunak was standing face to face with you, he would be capable of being pleasant. If he saw you hurt, he would definitely come to your aid. That level of empathy is easy; almost every human being on the planet has that level of empathy, but truly good people can empathise even with those they are disconnected from, even when that empathy could cost them - and people like Rishi Sunak lack that kind of empathy. That is why they are Tories.
Rishi Sunak has the David Cameron thing going on - smart casual, sleeves rolled up as though he's ready to dig in and work just as hard as you. Smiley face as though he's on your side, but he's your superficially nice boss who pretends to be your mate, then sits in his office and laughs as you work your arse off to buy him a new Ferrari.
And in Rishi's case, he does not need any more fucking Ferraris.
He is a perfect example of how capitalism has no end point at which the rich decide they have enough and it's time to redistribute the wealth more fairly. Even when they have wealth beyond their wildest dreams, all capitalists can think about is more wealth and more power. It ceases being about money and simply becomes a massive ego trip.
Rishi Sunak wants to be prime minister because he thinks Rishi Sunak deserves to be prime minister. He's not doing this to make the game fairer for you, he's doing it to ensure the game stays rigged against you, knowing his rich friends will idolise him for it.
If you're genuinely working class and you want Rishi Sunak to become prime minister, just know this is what you would be voting for. He has no connection to your struggle at all. He does not know what it is like to grow up on a council estate. He is a million miles removed from the working class towns he has happily defunded.
Here is a man who owns 12 houses deciding areas with a 75% child poverty rate need less money.
Rishi Sunak does not know what it was like to queue for a free school meal token and get so little to eat, you felt hungry for the rest of the day. He does not understand the lack of opportunity that comes from living an impoverished life, or perhaps he does, and just does not care, but he certainly does not understand from a first-hand perspective.
According to Wikipedia: "Sunak attended Stroud School, a preparatory school in Romsey, Hampshire, and Winchester College, a boys' independent boarding school."
I searched Google and I'm pretty sure this is the school.
Not exactly your typical high school, is it?
My high school was raided by the police because my mates were selling drugs. All kinds of crazy shit happened there: a lad was attacked with a hammer, but a teacher saved him from serious harm; another kid was stabbed in the leg by his mate "for a laugh".
I'm going out on a limb here and suggesting none of this went on at that pretty boarding school in Stroud. Shit, it might as well be located on a different planet to the place I grew up. No wonder Sunak has so little empathy for us, he has no experience of us. He said it himself, he does not have any working class friends. He has never encountered any working class people to befriend, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. He hears about all the bad things I've highlighted and just sees us as people to be punished, rather than given a fairer chance.
We probably repulse him. He's probably seen a few episodes of Shameless and Benefits Street and learnt everything he needs to know about us. People like him can judge, but what they can never do is empathise.
Sunak does not know what it's like to have our type of childhood, to play in a street with motorbikes racing up and down as you kick a barely-inflated football among broken beer bottles in an area where spray paint and marker pen are scrawled on the walls and some of those scrawls bear your name because what else are you going to do with your time, other than get up to no good? He does not know what it's like to hang around in a place where the scenery is a car on wheels, a tyre that somehow found itself around a lamppost, a pair of trainers hanging on a tree (I think they grow them). Our world truly is alien to him.
Sunak has only known privilege from day one. He was born to Indian-origin parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak who migrated to East Africa and then the UK in the 1960s. You would think this would make him more sympathetic to immigrants and refugees, but he actually wants to expand upon the Rwanda policy. "Send them back to Africa, even if they never came from Africa."
Sunak worked as an analyst for Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004 - just what we need, another banker. In 2010, he and some college friends launched a Hedge Fund called Theleme Partners with the the tiny sum of $700 million. He was also appointed director of Catamaran Ventures - an investment firm owned by Indian businessman Narayana Murthy, who just happens to be his father-in-law.
Sunak lives a life of posh dinners in places people like me would not be allowed to enter and fancy holidays to places people like me could only dream of visiting. He has no experience of the real world. He lives in this magical fantasy realm that only a fraction of one percent of people will ever experience.
When we say people like Rishi Sunak wouldn't last two minutes where we're from, it's perfectly true. He does not know what it's like to get the crap kicked out of you because you walked down the wrong street one rainy night and stumbled across a few unfamiliar faces when you were alone. He does not know what it's like to feel that burst of adrenaline when you're walking through an unfamiliar area, knowing you must be on your guard. He does not know what it's like to feel that same burst of adrenaline when you open a bill and have no idea how you're going to pay. Or when you're spoken to like shit by your boss and know if you say a damn thing, you're back to the dole queue again. He does not know what it's like to sit in a job interview, knowing you're being judged because of the way you talk or the estate you're from, knowing you have little chance of getting the job. He does not know what it's like to be long-term unemployed because 99% of the job applications you've sent off will never get a reply. He does not know what it's like to desperately cling to the job you find, even though you fucking hate it because there is nothing else around here and how the hell is someone like you going to retrain?
Rishi Sunak has only known shelter and privilege his entire life: while my classmates were put on a conveyor belt to the prison yard, Rishi Sunak was put on a conveyor belt to success. He didn't have to do anything, other than avoid falling over the sides, but he will tell you he worked very hard for everything that was handed to him.
He attended Winchester College, then Lincolnshire college, then Stanford University in California where he met the daughter of a billionaire. This path led to him becoming one half of the 222nd richest couple in the UK.
Rishi Sunak worked very hard for all of this. Just imagine how hard someone like me had to work, after dropping out of college because I was made homeless as a teenager and found myself in an unemployment blackspot with no money, no opportunities and no help. I would be very interested to see what type of hard work Rishi Sunak would've done in my circumstances to become one half of the 222nd richest couple in the UK.
The answer is nothing.
Barring an incredible stroke of luck, nothing Rishi Sunak could have done would have put himself into the position he is in now. His boasts of hard work and delusions of meritocracy are exasperating.
The truth is that if I, or indeed many other kids where I'm from, were put on Rishi Sunak's conveyor belt to success, we could have avoided falling off. Whereas if Sunak was put on the conveyor belt I was on, he could've easily ended up long-term unemployed, addicted to drugs, locked in prison or worse.
Perhaps in an alternative universe, there is an insufferable, wealthy version of me running to be prime minister, lecturing poor Rishi about "hard work" as he's dosed up on anti-depressants and working sixty hours a week to feed his four kids, only for his dickhead landlord to take a huge chunk of his earnings.
Perhaps in that universe Rishi Sunak is a socialist who is ready to fight the revolution! Perhaps there are some things most people would have to experience first-hand to truly understand, and Rishi Sunak, despite convincing himself he is a person of towering intellect, is not one of those rare people who can empathise with those who were born into a different world - and this is exactly why he should not be prime minister.
We, the working class, need to stop seeing people with a posh voice and a private education as better than us. We deserve a prime minister who is one of us, rather than one of them.