Rishi Sunak will be next UK prime minister
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Nice. Oh did you know he is also a millionaire* who is so out of touch with normal working close people?
The sooner we can have a general election the better. Been a complete and utter mess.
Edit: Wrong about net worth but we all know about Infosys?
Current estimates seem to put him and his wife combined at about £730M[1] (and most of that is his wife, I think.)
[1] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/23073397...
No, not even in USD; he and his wife[1] combined would have been a billionaire in better exchange days but he's got a long way, even at $2:£1 before he's any kind of billionaire.
[1] who has ~£500M, largely from the family business, I believe.
> Sunak was born on 12 May 1980 in Southampton[10][11] to African-born Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent,[12][13] Yashvir and Usha Sunak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishi_Sunak
Apparently coming from an immigrant family, modest background, becoming wealthy though hard work, and becoming PM is something to be despised?
As much as I despise this current bunch of MPs, I don't see anything wrong there. I doubt he would have achieved so much had his family stayed in Kenya.
To be descendant from immigrant is only relevant if you are a bigot with a potential impact on him becoming PM.
Despite the fact he comes from just about the most modest background possible. Which is surely something aspirational.
Nothing bigoted about that. And I don't see why someone's good fortune in life should be despised, just because they're an MP. Self-made wealth? Why not get angry with Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on?
The South Asian diaspora that migrated to Africa in the 1930s and then on to the UK in the 1960s faced many hardships, but economic woes were not often one of them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them have gone on to hold positions of power: Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Shailesh Vara to name a few MPs.
The reason why this group hasn't had economic woes is because they work harder than everyone else. I know a few families with this background, all of them came here with nothing, all their kids went to private school, they just worked harder and spent nothing. One family I know: three kids, all private school, their parents slept on the sofa and floor of their living room in a tiny flat, mother worked two/three jobs, dad worked 5am-10pm every day...if you didn't know what it took, they are privileged...but all anyone sees is "private school"...must be rich.
GPs and pharmacists didn't make that much money back then. Drawing sweeping conclusions about someone because of the school they went to (particularly given that Sunak was massively successful after school) is weak, it is the kind of narrow-minded viewpoint that the left constantly claims to be a victim of (in the UK).
When I was a kid, my neighbours in the 70s were exactly who you're referring to. An Asian-Ugandan couple who worked and worked and spent everything on their two daughters, who were a bit older than me. One went to a grammar school, the other to... private school, because that's what they could afford. In fact, the daughter that went to private school was the only kid in my area that did.
Besides, isn't it more ambitious and impressive to have worked one's way into a position of political power without the silver spoon and elite connections? Look at Angela Rayner, a single mother and former care worker; Michael Gove, who worked his way up from an Aberdeen state school; or Dennis Skinner, who worked for 20 years a coal miner before representing Bolsover and giving Enoch Powell a run for his money in Parliament.
There are many connections made in youth can continue to benefit you for the rest of your life. 33 PMs (of 56 in total) attended one of just 3 secondary schools, and 30 attended the same university. [1]
No one I've seen is commenting on his intelligence, but it is fair to question whether someone who has lived their teenage and adult life in and around the classical instituions of privilege (which are only accessible to and accepting of a minority) is a great choice for running a country having a cost of living crisis.
And I'm not sure where the idea that GPs didnt make that much comes from - £75k (adjusted) in the 90s was (and still is) a lot of money [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the...
Correct, because the UK has highly-selective schools and has two universities that are much better than the rest. If you just transport someone into Oxbridge, they do not automatically become a success, it is just totally backwards-thinking.
Background makes no difference. Discriminating against someone because they are rich is not any different to discriminating against them because they are poor. Honestly, it is actually a little disturbing to see people conclude openly that because someone went to X school they must be a certain kind of person...awful.
And if you look at the chart, you will see when GPs began to earn a lot of money. I am not quite sure you understand what inflation-adjusted means if you are talking about it being a lot of money, it is the same value then and now...but paying for Winchester would still have been a substantial expense (he had siblings, he has said in interviews that the pressure on him to get a scholarship...which he didn't get...was immense).
Basing it on the school he attended, which he had little influence over, is indeed nonsensical. Base your opinion on what he's said and done since instead. You'll probably come to the same conclusion though.
Original claim (touristtam):
> He is a billionaire with a rich wife that hasn't been on a working class family wages for a very long time if he ever was. He cannot fathom the hardship that he is about to unleash on said working class.
Counter claim (DrBazza):
> he comes from just about the most modest background possible
Counter counter claim (Me):
> his father was a GP, his mother ran a local pharmacy, and he attended a very privileged boarding school
Rishi himself is on the record as making statements such as "I have no working class friends", "I always consider myself professional middle class", and "I tell inner city state school kids to apply to Oxford and talk to them about people like me, and then I shock them by saying I went to Winchester".
I'm not sure of the exact proportion of children attending public school per year in the UK, but I'm willing to bet it's a fraction of a percent. Both his siblings also attended private schools.
Rishi didn't have a "modest" background. He just didn't. Yes, his grandparents could be said to have grafted their way out of the working class. Yes, his parents worked hard to put him through a good education. That's exactly the point: he's never suffered and he doesn't know what being working class is like. He's been in the upper half of the middle class for his whole life.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-contactles...
>Apparently ... becoming wealthy though hard work ... is something to be despised?
>While studying at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman
It will be austerity 2.0 and the predictions are of a deeper recession because of tax increases and spending cuts (both already announced in general terms by Hunt, ally of Sunak and tipped to remain Chancellor).
Increasing the corporation tax is his policy, for instance.
A lot of the government's debt level issues also stem from the response to Covid when, hmm, Sunak was in charge of public finances...
If he is an MMT-er then we might dodge austerity but i can't see him standing up to the bond markets after what the UK has just been through so that will hold him back. Also if he is an MMT-er there's the need for higher taxation and no-one has figured out how that side of MMT should work fairly yet i don't think?
AIUI the contentious point of MMT is on crowding out private investment.
EDIT: for clarity
Central bank monetary policy did not lead to the current inflation, just like it did not lead to inflation in the post-GFC era. Unlike what some folks predicted back then:
> We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment.
* https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.ht...
At least per the SF Fed's research, about half of the current situation in the US is/was supply-side issues, and about a third is the demand side of things:
* https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
The demand side was mostly driven by fiscal stimulus.
The commodities chaos caused by recent geopolitical events kind of threw a wrench into most predictions.
They are specifically not austerity 2.0, that is why they are raising taxes (Osborne reduced taxes significantly whilst cutting spending). All the measures to raise taxes were in order to sustain spending levels because there is no way to cut the large spending areas in the short-term. His approach has been to do that in the most fair way possible (the increase in corporation tax is combined with the introduction of a new small company rate which stays the same).
...and what was the alternative to furlough once the govt announced lockdowns?
Hunt already said that there will be huge spending cuts.
What we're waiting for are the details of where these will fall, not if they will happen.
The increase of the corporation will hurt the economy further and remove a competitive advantage (new rate will be same as Germany's...). Again, this is not my opinion but what the reports from economists and analysists say.
This is a classic austerity approach to reduce debt. The conflict within the party is between that and reducing debt relatively to GDP (but perhaps not in absolute terms) by going for growth (making the cake bigger) but as we've seen that latter strategy is problematic because the markets do not really want to here about even further debt.
The rise in corporation tax for MNCs won't hurt competitiveness. The US had a 35% rate with no issues. We can raise ours to 25% with no issues. The only reason we reduced our rate to the level we did was because of tax havens in the EU, we have a global corporate tax deal which the EU will comply with (saying vaguely that you are right because "economists and analysists" say so is weak).
The issue with "going for growth" was that it wouldn't have boosted growth. The spending cuts were only required because of the tax cuts, the tax cuts aren't happening. When he was Chancellor, Sunak was cutting spending and this will likely continue (it has to, spending is far too high, the NHS became massively bloated during Covid). Reduction of debt will be gradual, the strategy is not austerity (as has been repeated ad nauseum, this happened after 2018 as well...some people just never stopped saying austerity was happening even when spending was rising significantly).
Yeah, experts, what do they know!
> Sunak was cutting spending and this will likely continue
So, austerity 2.0, then.
First time I hear spending of the NHS has to be cut because they are 'bloated'... usually people complain about lack of resources.
Have a good one.
No, any kind of spending cut doesn't not equal austerity 2.0. Labour would also be cutting spending, so that is austerity 2.0?
NHS spending is close to Germany levels, which is regarded as ludicrously inefficient, even for a private system, because of the emphasis on choice. I suspect that the difference between me and "people" is actually being aware of what NHS spending is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishi_Sunak#Cryptocurrencies_a...
What the members of the party want does not always align with what elected MPs think is best, nor what the public as a whole believes.
This time around, the requirements to be eligible to proceed in the contest were tightened - candidates needed 100 MPs supporting them. This was designed to speed up the process considerably.
At the deadline, Rishi was the only candidate that met the requirements, so he won by default, and there was no need to have a ballot of the members.
Cancelling the increase in National Insurance: Well, Hunt has said this will remain cancelled.
Cancelling the increase in corporation tax: Welcomed by economists and businesses. Increase is predicted to make recession worse.
Reducing the additional rate: Definitely not the right time, but note that this rate has only existed for 10 years.
So it is not that the policies are "widely regarded as utterly batshit". Individually they are not. But they were announced all at once without any hints of funding and that's what spooked the markets (more debts and fuel for inflation when the situation on both fronts is already bad).
Last time, Sunak got the most votes among MPs by some margin, with Truss coming second; but Truss won when the vote was put to the party members (possibly because they were very pro-Boris Johnson, and regarded Sunak as disloyal, seeing as it was his resignation that effectively forced Johnson's).
This time, Sunak was the only candidate to get enough nominations to run at all, so he won by default (though the number of nominations he got showed he was again the clear favourite among the party's MPs).
Party members "overwhelmingly" voted Truss. Rishi Sunak isn't liked by the people that matter most - the party members, and seemingly, the electorate.
Basically the Tory party is back where it was under John Major in the 90s. In-fighting and completely ignoring what the electorate think. It's odds on that Labour will get into power in 2024, not because they have the plan and the policies, but simply they're not the Tories.
It really is a case of 'those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. And here the Tories are. Arguably the last time Labour got elected on their own merit was many, many decades ago.
Frankly it's tedious to hear adversarial politics in Britain. But that's all we're going to get from the Labour Party for the next 2 years. They could be laying out policies, preparing for government, being an adult political party, and ignoring the Tories, because frankly, no one cares about the Tories at the moment. But Labour won't do that.
UK politics is a sewer.
I'll raise your "Russia should just..." with "NATO should just not expand into Ukraine". Sure I'll lose some internet points but I'm illustrating that your simplification does not reflect that the other side has what they perceive as a valid point of view as well.
It did not. Nor did it plan to do so.
> We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become
> a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part
> of the process; we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent
> decisions, including that each partner will be judged on its own merits. We stand firm
> in our support for Ukraine’s right to decide its own future and foreign policy course
> free from outside interference.
> The Annual National Programmes under the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) remain the
> mechanism by which Ukraine takes forward the reforms pertaining to its aspiration for
> NATO membership. Ukraine should make full use of all instruments available under the
> NUC to reach its objective of implementing NATO principles and standards. The success
> of wide-ranging, sustainable, and irreversible reforms, including combating
> corruption, promoting an inclusive political process, and decentralisation reform,
> based on democratic values, respect for human rights, minorities, and the rule of law,
> will be crucial in laying the groundwork for a prosperous and peaceful Ukraine.
> Further reforms in the security sector, including the reform of the Security Services
> of Ukraine, are particularly important. We welcome significant reforms already made by
> Ukraine and strongly encourage further progress in line with Ukraine’s international
> obligations and commitments.
> We will continue to provide practical support to reform in the security and defence
> sector, including through the Comprehensive Assistance Package. We will also continue
> to support Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen its resilience against hybrid threats,
> including through intensifying activities under the NATO-Ukraine Platform on
> Countering Hybrid Warfare.
> We welcome the cooperation between NATO and Ukraine with regard to security in the
> Black Sea region. The Enhanced Opportunities Partner status granted last year provides
> further impetus to our already ambitious cooperation and will promote greater
> interoperability, with the option of more joint exercises, training, and enhanced
> situational awareness.
> Military cooperation and capacity building initiatives between Allies and Ukraine,
> including the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, further reinforce this effort. We
> highly value Ukraine’s significant contributions to Allied operations, the NATO
> Response Force, and NATO exercises.
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/17/on-ukraine-the-...
That's about the only thing all parties do agree on here.
I can't tell if you think you're making a serious suggestion, or just trolling.
It's not about appeasement, it's about plain common sense, i.e. not shooting oneself in the foot. Sanctions have hurt Europe more than Russia, their ruble and export revenues are actually up since before the war, while Europe is struggling with inflation and basic gas supply issues.
As I said though, I don't think reversing sanctions is a political option in the UK, even if it made sense financially. It would certainly be perceived as appeasing Putin.
Right now I think there is a general desire to hurt Putin's regime (without direct confrontation between NATO and Russia). Even if it hurts us too. Maybe when Winter bites, attitudes will shift.
Edit: Putin's regime also carried out assassinations in our country using radioactive materials and nerve poison (which killed some innocent bystanders too). We really, really don't like him.