The criticism facing Rishi Sunak has nothing to do with race, and all to do with greed – iNews

As dishy Rishi loses his sheen and glow, his enthusiastic champions group and defend his reputation.

The Independent broke the story last week about the complicated (and murky and secret) tax and citizenship arrangements of the Chancellor and his wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of a multimillionaire. In brief, she had non-dom status to keep down tax bills; its claimed he was listed as a beneficiary of offshore trusts (though he denies any knowledge of this) and he held the coveted American green card until October 2021.

After days of bad press, she has now decided to pay UK tax on her overseas income and he has referred himself to the Rt Hon Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministers affairs, that same establishment toff who decided that Boris Johnson did not break the ministerial code when he accepted 58,000 from a Tory donor to refurbish the flat at 10 Downing Street.

Sunak and Murty loyalists are attempting to discredit those who put out the story and to attribute unsavoury motives to those who are rightly scandalised.

Last week, a furious Indian-British friend rang me to say that the Sunaks were being picked on because they were brown. I told her they were tax-avoiders and his policies punished the poor. She called me a race traitor.

I tweeted about this insulting exchange and had a vile email from a supporter of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, accusing me of being an anti-Hindu Muslim. On the BBC news on Saturday night, an erstwhile Tory press officer said that the uproar was caused by the politics of envy.

Time to take on and see off these groundless and dangerous perceptions. What is happening to Mr and Mrs Sunak is not an example of racism or ethnic or religious prejudice; it is not proof of sexism, nor an example of class envy. Finally and most emphatically, it is not a sinister plot by officials to oust a brilliant politician.

Sunaks assertion that, like Will Smith, he was a husband trying to stop his wife from being disrespected, sounded manipulative and hollow. Envious communists are not behind the scandal. The most bitter politics of envy are found in his rarefied, high-brow world. Those with far too much perpetually envy those who are higher up the rich lists.

Now it has been reported that Sunak wants the authorities to catch and punish the insider who leaked this information to the press. This suggests that he is irredeemably vindictive and entitled. Apparently, the financial affairs of the powerful and rich have to be tightly guarded secrets. The lower orders have no such expectations or rights.

In my view, this is a salutary tale of insatiable, extreme greed, of how those at the top of the social pyramid are forever looking for ways to pay the least possible amount of tax into the public purse; of the ruling Tories really believing that they have no duty to the nation and, even more offensively, that ordinary people must be squeezed and terrorised by fiscal prudence while the richest Cabinet members we have ever had, and their loaded mates, are exempt from any kind of fiscal accountability.

Sajid Javid confessed this weekend that he too was a non-dom during the years that he was raking in millions as a City banker. Why did he need to do that? Read above. He, like other hard Tories, is an ardent fan of Ayn Rand, the US philosopher who disdained collective rights and propagated ethical egotism or the virtue of selfishness.

Sunak voted against tightening financial regulation to combat abusive tax avoidance and either abstained from or voted against human rights and equality laws (check out the website TheyWorkForYou.com).

Did he support Brexit because the EU was clamping down on banks, law and accountancy firms which facilitated offshore tax-avoidance schemes? Just asking.

Now Murty has announced that she appreciates the British sense of fairness and will pay UK tax on all her income. But questions remain. Will Sunak and Murty now offer full transparency about all of their financial affairs?

Such people need to learn they cannot have it all. But such people will never learn that lesson. Sunak will get over this. He may even be Prime Minister one day. Being this rich means never having to take responsibility.

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The criticism facing Rishi Sunak has nothing to do with race, and all to do with greed - iNews