In failing to take the initiative over the tricky issue of his family’s wealth, the chancellor has dented his own brand
Rishi Sunak sounded every inch the gallant, protective husband. His wife, Akshata Murty, hadn’t asked to be in the public eye, the chancellor told the BBC plaintively, and he had found it “very upsetting” when she was targeted. Her money was her money, and the stake she held in the multibillion-pound family business Infosys – which was then still doing brisk trade in Moscow even as Sunak exhorted companies to cut ties with Russia – was strictly her affair, not his.
After all, isn’t every woman entitled to a professional life independent from her husband’s? The chancellor even wryly compared himself to the actor Will Smith, who lashed out at the comedian Chris Rock after the latter joked about his wife’s hair, as if being reportedly richer than the Queen was just Akshata’s rotten luck too.
