Put down your tiny violins, everyone – Jason Manford has smashed it out of the park when he summed up what we’re all thinking about Rishi Sunak’s childhood.
The Salford-born comedian captured the mood of the nation after clips from tonight’s ITV debate dropped, showing the richest Prime Minister in history laughing as he was grilled on what he was forced to ‘go without’ so his parents could put him through expensive private school.
Pushed on what he’d gone without as a child, Mr Sunak said: “Oh, we went without lots of things because my parents wanted to put everything into our education and that was a priority.” But when asked what sort of things had to be sacrificed, he could only say “lots of things” before laughing.
When pressed again by ITV interviewer Paul Brand, the PM awkwardly said: “All sorts of things like lots of people. There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have.” He added: “ Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up, actually.”
His comments have been met with widespread derision, especially as Mr Sunak attended the prestigious fee-paying Winchester College boarding school throughout the 1990s.
Today, a year as a boarding student at the school would set back parents a staggering £48,152, or £36,369 for a day pupil.
Jason, 43, took to X to slam the Prime Minister’s attempt to plead poverty, skewering him with an insightful observation.
“Why do they pretend that their upbringing was worse than it was!” he tweeted. “We see right through you! A more compassionate answer would’ve been ‘look, my parents worked hard & I was fortunate to have a warm house & food on the table & I want to make sure every child in the UK has that too’.”
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Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
It’s the latest in a series of embarrassing stumbling blocks and gaffes made by Mr Sunak since calling a snap general election in the pouring rain.
He’s previously been accused of being out of touch with the public after old clips resurfaced of him laughing about not having working class friends.
During the 2022 Tory leadership battle, a young Sunak was seen in footage saying: “I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class… Well, not working class.”
The Oxford University graduate claimed he was middle class while also bragging about how one of his best friends studied at Eton.
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BBC)
In the BBC clip, he says: “I mix and match and then I go to see kids from an inner city state school and tell them to apply for Oxford and talk to them about people like me.
“And then I shock them at the end of chatting to them for half an hour and tell them that I was at Winchester and one of my best friends is from Eton and whatever. And they are like ‘oh, okay’.”
He added: “I am very lucky to have been at these places, it does put me in an elite in society. I always consider myself professional middle class, I don’t think being Asian is a defining feature.”
*Watch The Leadership Interviews: Rishi Sunak tonight at 7pm on ITV