June 12th 2024.
According to Jacob, Rishi Sunak's background has always been a hindrance for him to connect with people. Even with the "meh" options we have in the upcoming General Election, I never had the urge to idealize the politicians of my millennial youth. I don't support Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's New Labour project, and I firmly believe that David Cameron's conservative cabinet, with its focus on austerity, was one of the most damaging governments in our country's history.
But what sets Blair, Cameron, and Brown apart from Sunak is that I didn't know intimate details of their childhoods. I didn't know what their parents did for a living, and I certainly had no idea how many channels they had on their TV. However, just three weeks after Sunak's rain-soaked launch of the snap General Election campaign, both Labour and Tory leaders seem determined to bombard us with their life stories, using tedious details of their upbringings to win our favor.
I, for one, am tired of it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. If I were a student, I'm sure there would be a drinking game based on how many times Starmer mentions his father being a toolmaker or how much we hear about the Sunak family pharmacy that we should all be invited to their Christmas party.
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Back to the main issue, though. You'd probably get sick pretty quickly if you played that drinking game, but for now, the only thing making me nauseous is the constant reminders of the candidates' parents' jobs. And now Sunak has taken it a step further, tugging at our heartstrings in an attempt to win our sympathy by revealing that as a child, he had to go without Sky Television.
Yep, you read that right. Not food, not heating, not clothes, but access to new episodes of The Simpsons and the early days of the Premier League. It just goes to show that these desperate attempts by politicians to win our votes with their X-Factor style life stories will always fall flat.
More specifically, it proves how terrible Sunak is at politics and how his background has always prevented him from connecting with the public. After receiving criticism for missing part of the D-Day commemorations, Sunak revealed that he had media obligations with ITV. A week later, we find out that these obligations involved him trying to garner sympathy by telling us that his parents had to make a tough decision between paying tuition fees for his private school, Winchester College, and getting Sky TV.
Obviously, the prices have changed since Sunak's childhood, but a quick Google search shows that Winchester currently charges almost £50,000 a year in fees, while Sky TV packages start at just £26 a month. I'm no economist, but something doesn't add up here, and it's not just the figures in Sunak's manifesto.
Sunak and his wife are worth £651 million, and he made millions while working at a firm accused of triggering the UK's financial crash. It's clear that he's out of touch. But shouldn't he have a team of highly-paid, expensively-educated advisors who could have warned him that the public might not sympathize with his "struggle" in childhood? It's laughable, like most of his campaign.
Our country is facing a crisis, and our children aren't struggling because they don't have Sky TV. They're struggling because they don't have enough food. Sunak and his party seem to be having an identity crisis, where they are bizarrely oblivious to how poorly they are viewed by the general public.
There was never any chance that the country would feel sorry for Sunak's upbringing. It only highlights the fact that he is completely out of touch and cannot relate to managing a household budget during tough times.
Sunak proved this again when he tweeted, "You will always be better at spending your own money than the government is." But hasn't his party been in government for the past 14 years? If he doesn't think he's capable of spending our money, why does he want us to give him another term in office?
Perhaps, at some point, he will have a moment of clarity and realize the impact of his immense wealth, privilege, and poor decisions. Maybe, after facing a historic defeat in the election, he will finally understand that, regardless of whether his family had Sky or "council TV," he was never going to connect with the general public.
Sunak is part of the elite, and he doesn't deserve our sympathy. Hopefully, in a few weeks, he and his party will be gone, and he'll have more time to watch whatever television he pleases. Share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have a story to share, email us at
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