The prime minister sincerely hopes, as he said last week, that we’ve “moved beyond judging people by what’s in their bank account.” Is that so? Attitudes to wealth and inequality are confusing and often inconsistent. But Sunak’s phenomenal fortune seems deeply unhelpful for his electoral prospects.
Those in his stratosphere have prospered exponentially, especially in the past decade, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. Their gravity-defying golden era, untouched by the banking crash, Brexit or the pandemic, only this year suffered a blip. Sunak, the first prime minister to feature, and his wife, Akshata Murty, are listed at £529m, down from £730m last year. It’s hard to comprehend such numbers. The pair lost £500,000 a day – a day – for 12 months, yet even that is too little to touch lifestyles in this hyper-realm.
Does it matter that Sunak belongs to this tiny golden clan? Yes, say the pollsters. “His wealth is beyond comprehension,” says Chris Hopkins of Savanta. “People feel he’s out of touch, not normal. How can he legislate on the cost of living, with no experience of their lives?” Labour ads go for the jugular: “Do you think it’s right to raise taxes for working people when your family has benefited from a tax loophole? Rishi Sunak does.” On tax avoidance, the Labour line chimes with the Fairness Foundation’s finding that eight in 10 people, including 79% of Tory voters, think the wealthy don’t contribute their fair share of taxes.
Labour’s own research finds Sunak’s super-wealth “matters a lot, as it means he can’t imagine, and so doesn’t care, about people’s reality,” one Labour source told me. Attacking his wealth shows Labour no longer fears being accused of “the politics of envy” but expects to strike a chord with its own “politics of empathy”.
The top 1% are now seen as more powerful than government, reports a cross-party group of MPs this week: 39% rank the very rich as most powerful, while only 24% think governments hold the real power, reversing opinion in the last five years. Prof Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute, described this as “a remarkable shift in a short period of time.” It matches Fairness Foundation polling showing that almost 70% of people are concerned at some owning over £10m while others live in poverty.
Yet wealth is still tricky political terrain to navigate. How people make money matters: Fairness Foundation polling shows entrepreneurs and sports stars are deserving, and so, oddly, are landlords, whose wealth is seen as fair by 53%, unfair only by 13%. But the figures for financiers are not as convincing. Inheritance wealth, says the poll, is “fair” for both new-money and old-money heirs; and while the progressive instinct is to raise inheritance tax, the public is in favour of inherited wealth. Protecting your children is a reflex deeper than politics.
The question of who is rich is fraught. A fascinating new book, Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality, by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell, surveys unhappiness and insecurity at the top. The top 10% constitute the most unequal group, stretching from those who earn £60,000 at the bottom to the 0.1% whose multimillions and billions shoot off the graph. This powerful group are leaders of business and professions, yet are almost all much further from the top than they are to the median.
Most of them feel increasingly insecure, running on a hamster wheel, yet making little progress as pay retreats for them, too. Because they’re more likely to compare themselves to those above them, rather than those below, they don’t feel rich, and tend to be ignorant of how far above the ordinary they are. They feel insecure. According to the IFS in the book, a quarter won’t be in the top 10% in a year’s time. Half will fall out of this category within five years, due to economic shocks, illness or bad luck.
They think they’re already overtaxed, seriously underestimating how much they need state services over the course of their life, particularly during their expensive elderly years. Austerity has so damaged society that the worse public services become – ambulance response times, unprosecuted crimes and cash-strapped schools – the less willing people are to pay more tax to fund these services. They fear that their children, who already earn less, will be unable to afford their parents’ lifestyle. The book is addressed to these 9.9% of people in the top bracket, warning them of worse to come. Investing in a good society will do them more good than trying and failing to mimic the isolated individualism of the super-rich.
The 9.9%, like the rest, want the super-rich to pay more. Agreeing with Denis Healey’s famous promise, which he made about property developers, most voters think it’s now time to squeeze the rich until “the pips squeak”, which doesn’t bode well for Rishi Sunak.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Uncomfortably Off by Marcos Gonzalez Hernando & Gerry Mitchell (Bristol University Press, £19.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
