According to Becky Morton, Political reporter
Rishi Sunak says he didn’t have “many things” as a child, including Sky TV.
In an interview with ITV News, the prime minister, who attended fee-paying Winchester College, said her parents “wanted to put everything into our education and make it a priority”.
Mr. Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty Estimated to have a personal fortune of £651m.
Labor sought to use Mr Sunak’s wealth to portray him as out of touch and out of touch with ordinary people during the cost of living crisis.
Asked if he had left with nothing, the PM told ITV: “Yeah, I mean, my family moved here with very little. And that’s how I was brought up.
Mr. Sunak’s father is a general practitioner, while his mother runs her own pharmacy.
Asked what he had to sacrifice, he said: “A lot of things.”
Pressed for an example, he said: “Everything is like a lot of people. There will be different things that I would have liked as a child that I couldn’t have. The famous one, Sky TV, so it’s something that we never really grew up with.”
Speaking on the campaign trail Mr Sunak said he was “very, very lucky that my parents had good jobs”.
He added: “But the reality of the situation is that my grandparents immigrated to this country, with very little and for three generations, I’m sitting here talking to you as prime minister.”
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said he did not want to comment on Mr Sunak’s remarks, but when pushed said he had previously spoken about his family having to turn off their phones when they couldn’t pay their bills.
But he says he doesn’t “beg for poverty” and that it’s just a normal thing to grow up in a working-class household.
Speaking on a campaign visit to Warwickshire, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he didn’t have Sky TV as a child.
Asked what he couldn’t do growing up, Sir Ed said: “I lost my dad when I was four and my mum was amazing, she made it through.
“They didn’t have much money … and I remember my mother taking me up the hill to Costcutter where the coffee was two cents cheaper.”
Sky Television was launched in 1989, when Mr. Sunak was eight years old. Within a year of its launch, Sky claimed to reach one million households in the UK, up from six million subscribers in the late 1990s.
Its popularity increased after Sky Sports won the rights to show Premier League football games in 1992.
Sky channels were initially free to anyone paying for a dish and set-top box, with subscription packages introduced a few years later.
Mr Sunak, 44, worked as a hedge fund manager before becoming an MP and became the first front-line politician to feature in the Sunday Times’ annual rich list in its 35-year history.
However, most of the family’s wealth comes from her husband’s holdings in IT giant Infosys, which her father founded.
Ms Murty’s finances came under the spotlight in 2022, when Mr Sunak became chancellor, when it appeared she had non-dom status, which allows people living in the UK to avoid paying UK tax on money made abroad.
He then said they will start paying UK tax on their overseas earnings.
The ITV interview, broadcast in full later, was recorded on June 6, after the PM attended D-Day commemorations in France.
Mr Sunak faced criticism for leaving the event to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings early.
He attended the British event in Ver sur Mer but left before the international commemoration attended by world leaders including US President Joe Biden, with Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron deputizing for him.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer stayed on the show until the end.
After the backlash, Mr. Sunak apologized on Fridaysaying that “in reflection” is wrong not to attend all events.
It then emerged that on his return to the UK, the PM did an interview with ITV.
Mr Sunak said the itinerary for D-Day was set “weeks ago”.
In a clip released by ITV News, which appeared to show the PM talking to journalist Paul Brand before the official interview began, Mr Sunak apologized for being late, saying the event in Normandy “ran”.
“It’s incredible. But it just ran through,” he said, adding that he had met “many veterans” and “said to almost everyone there”.
It was after Mr. Sunak launched the Conservative Party manifesto on Tuesdaywith a promise to cut taxes further.
He warned against giving Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer “a blank cheque, when he hasn’t said what it’s going to buy or how much it’s going to cost you”.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has suggested The Tories are “fighting for every single seat in this country” so that Labor secures a “supermajority” even bigger than the 1997 landslide under Tony Blair.
He told Times Radio that if “power is not checked, it will be very bad news for the people of this country”.