Rishi Sunak played a number of cards very badly yesterday when he said that it was not appropriate for people to question his wife's income from her family company which is continuing to trade in Russia, and which recently paid her £12 million in dividends.
Rishi does, I think, protest too much. The Ministerial Code says:
Sunak's claim that his wife's affairs are not in the public domain just because he is Chancellor is simply false. They are. Indeed, I think his father-in-law's interests should have been disclosed as well given how material they are to his well-being.
I had more to say on this on LBC last night. Listen here, starting at 1.07 in.
As I also noted there, his drawing a parallel between his situation and that of Will Smith took him to new lows. He claimed he was the good guy for not hitting anyone, but otherwise found similarities on wives being picked on. If you need to call Will Smith in your defence right now, you're in big trouble.
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I saw your Twitter feed yesterday. You clearly endorsed the bullying of a women. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I did nothing of the sort
I’ve looked through Richard’s Twitter feed and can’t spot the tweet you’re referring to. Could you elaborate please?
Will Smith slapped someone. Sunak chooses to commit social murder. He probably is deluded enough to think he’s still the good guy though. Actions have consequences, and the consequences of Sunak’s actions are literally death.
‘Pete Shelley’s’ comment is absolutely unacceptable.
I’ve seen that thread and it does nothing of the sort.
But when comments like that appear, the damage is done.
My advice is to remove it and not allow shit like that through in the future.
What I saw when I saw the clip of Will Smith hitting Chris Rock was a man who had laughed at the Rock’s joke only to seek to recover his position with his wife who was not amused. Smith was angry with himself and took it out on Rock. That’s not very grown up at all.
I’ve always liked Chris Rock as an actor and comedian – he’s had me in stiches using humour to highlight racism and other issues and made me think on many occasions.
Smith OTOH – as pleased as I am to see a BAME actor and his family make it in an industry that is still dominated by white folk, I don’t know what the attraction is to be honest. His Oscar should have been withdrawn that night.
I believe he was asked to leave and he refused. I think that that raises some interesting points about privilege and entitlement being increasingly about wealth and not ethnicity.
In short, Will Smith is maybe a bit of a Tory. He feels that he can hurt someone in public and then avoid the consequences because he confuses wealth with morality like most Tories do.
So Sunak is much closer to Smith than he realises. It’s just another mistake on his part like so many he is making about the economy right now.
But Richard, everyone knows the Ministerial Code does not apply to this government.
They wrote this one – it was published in August 2019
Though not condoning Will Smith’s actions, Sunak’s comparison is specious at best. Will Smith’s wife did not choose to have alopecia, so to make joke about that is no different than to joke about disability, race etc – Sunak’s wike has chosen to take the profits which I’m sure does not cause her the anguish that having alopecia does – something I didn’t see called out in the media.