From tech bro to culture warrior

So who is the real Rishi Sunak?

- Peter Walker

Rishi Sunak has been prime minister for just over a year, but it is probably fair to say that many voters still don't have much sense of what sort of leader he is. This is, in part, because of his fondness for sometimes contradictory policy resets. But it is also something more fundamental about Sunak, a political opaqueness on to which voters - and MPs - can project their own wishes.

So who is the real Sunak? We have seen quite a few versions already.

The big-spending empathiser

This is the incarnation many voters initially encountered, when Sunak, still only five years into his Commons career, was the face of the furlough scheme as Boris Johnson's chancellor during Covid. As a political first impression it wasn't altogether bad.

The scheme - officially two schemes: furlough to protect people's jobs, and another programme to support those who were self employed - meant Sunak gave away over £70bn of public money, and it was generally deemed a success.

The pandemic also gave Sunak a chance to show his human side at Covid press conferences, where his sober, quietly reassuring, bedside manner was a notable contrast to Johnson's tendency to bombast and glibness.

The citizen of nowhere

A less flattering image emerged later in Sunak's time as chancellor, when it emerged that his wife, Akshata Murty, had non-domiciled status for UK taxes, and then that he had held a US green card even while at the Treasury.

Sunak's wealth was not a secret Murty is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Infosys - but these details, plus reporting on the family's £5m home in Santa Monica, left an abiding impression of someone not in touch with everyday life, and even, perhaps, not entirely committed to a UK political career.