Rishi Sunak is a Goldman Sachs Tory.

There isn’t anything One Nation about him, he’s a child of Thatcherism.

Toby Lipatti-Mesme
2 min readNov 30, 2020

Rishi Sunak likes to create a cuddly, acceptable image. He pledged to free himself of dogma, and then became the nice man who hands us money and wields the arms of the state to subsidise Happy Meals. The irony is not lost on me that the Tory chancellor has overseen more state intervention (by a country mile) than a hypothetical Corbyn government had ever planned to undertake.

Only one thing can unravel the wonderous image of Mr Pragmatic, Saucy Sunak himself; the truth. Rishi Sunak is one of the most ideologically rigid people in the cabinet (why do you think the MPs love him), he’s a child of the Thatcherite consensus, and was a cheerleader of the failed austerity project. He’s a hardline fiscal conservative, as we all could find out over the next couple of years.

Rishi Sunak acts like a “wet Tory” but he’s easily a “dry Tory” at heart. What’s more, how can he be expected to stand up to the vested interests standing between the Treasury and some form of wealth tax, or asset taxation (on the wealthy) to pay for the cost of COVID, when the average worker has seen their wages squeezed and millionaires and billionaires have seen their wealth soar, when he’s complicit in the dodgy dealings of the billionaire class.

Mr Sunak isn’t just a Tory, he’s a Goldman Sachs Tory. His wife is spectacularly wealthy, and various holdings and financial interests Mr Sunak holds haven’t been declared, which is a flagrant degradation of standards in public life. Sunak looks set to continue getting away with this.

The latest revelation on Dishy Rishi, provider of Meal Deals, is the fact that his wife partially owns a firm that funnelled money through a tax haven, complicit in robbing the Indian taxpayer blind (something that overall has cost the Indian state £10–15bn over 20 years).

Let it sink in; the chief financial Minister, and the man with his grip on the public purse, doesn’t just ignore the corruption rife among the wealthy; he is a member of the corrupt ranks of the wealthy. He’s not just a millionaire, who’s wife is richer than the Queen, who worked at Goldman Sachs; his wife has allegedly funnelled money through tax havens.

Do not be deceived; Rishi Sunak is as far from pragmatic or One Nation as it gets.

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Toby Lipatti-Mesme
Toby Lipatti-Mesme

Written by Toby Lipatti-Mesme

Insightful and innovative UK journalism and commentary, from Toby Lipatti-Mesme.