Coke, car trouble and class: some awkward Rishi Sunak moments

Read More

He has never claimed to be a man of the people but with his Prada shoes and bespoke suits, the soon-to-be prime minister, Rishi Sunak, tries to be meticulous about his presentation.

Yet the past seven years in politics have not been gaffe-free for the former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-chancellor.

Taking from the poor to help the rich

In a leaked video, Sunak boasted to Conservative party members in Tunbridge Wells that he took public money out of “deprived urban areas” to help wealthy towns.

In footage obtained by the New Statesman, Sunak said: “We inherited a bunch of formulas from the Labour party which shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas.” He then boasted about the fact that he started to reverse those policies as chancellor.

‘Coke addict’

“I am a Coke addict, I am a total Coke addict,” he said in an interview with two giggling school pupils, before rapidly clarifying and explaining, in case there was any confusion, that he was “a Coca-Cola addict”.

He went on to say his favourite was “Mexican Coke”. One viewer described it as like a “scene out of The Office”.

Petrol pump gaffe

He was accused of pretending to be less wealthy during a PR stunt to mark a cut in the price in petrol. It turned out the red Kia car he filled up with petrol in front of the cameras actually belonged to an employee at the Sainsbury’s service station.

“The most embarrassing thing that’s happened to me is I struggled to pay for the petrol in a car that wasn’t my own,” he later admitted.

Not able to use a contactless bank card

At the same photo op, he appeared to try to pay for a can of Coca-Cola by scanning his bank card on a barcode reader.

He later admitted that someone had to teach him how to use the contactless card.

“Since then, someone’s taught me how to use that contactless machine. And I tell you, it’s an amazing modern marvel this technology these days!”

He once said he had no working-class friends

In a 2001 BBC documentary called Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl, a young Sunak spoke about his aristocratic friends and his privileged education.

“I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class … Well, not working class,” he said.

“I mix and match and then I go to see kids from an inner-city state school and tell them to apply to Oxford and talk to them about people like me and then I shock them at the end of chatting with them for half an hour and tell them I was at Winchester and one of my best friends is from Eton and whatever and they are like: ‘Oh, OK.'”

“We all say silly things when we are students,” he would later tell Andrew Neil.