Having served as chancellor throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,
his resignation came as one of the most damaging to Boris Johnson in July.
After the resignation of Liz Truss, the 42 year old quickly reached the threshold of
100 nominations from the parliamentary party,
for his name to appear on the online ballot for the party membership.
And on Sunday, he confirmed his readiness to serve.
>> That's right, Britain's former treasury Chief who is absolutely not
an attractive man and I'm not gonna prove out regarding his looks at all,
is Rishi Sunak he has been named the prime minister of Britain.
Following the resignation of Liz Truss also from the Conservative Party and
of course, she served the shortest prime minister term in great
Britain's history only six weeks now.
While some headlines seem to be hyper focused on the fact that he will
be the first person of color to lead Britain.
Fact of the matter is he actually represents more of the trickle down
economics that really has harmed the economy in the UK and
I'll get to those details in just a moment.
But it's important to also emphasize that he came to power,
not through a public vote, not through a general election, but by his own party.
Essentially deciding that he would be the one to fill the role that
Liz Truss stepped down from.
Now after losing out to trust in the summer Sunak is on his way to
Downing Street after his leadership race rival,
Penny Mordaunt withdrew from the contest at the last minute.
Now the whole thing again is super undemocratic while trust became
Britain's leader after being voted in by Conservative Party members.
Less than 1% of the electorate, nobody has voted for Sunak to become prime minister.
So, we put previously talked a little bit about how this whole system works,
the party with the prime minister who steps down in this case was originally
Boris Johnson, then later Liz trust.
That same party gets to decide who then fills the role after the resignation.
Now, he claims he wants to focus on stability, meaning economic stability,
something that the UK is certainly struggling with right now.
But he also says that he wants to unify his party because there are many
divisions within it, there are also many challenges that he will have to deal with.
Britain's rampant inflation and rocketing energy and
food prices have thrown the economy into chaos.
Menace made worse by trustees disastrous handling of public finances,
which has left the nation's fiscal reputation in urgent need of repair.
Sunak will also likely be forced to preside over unpopular
spending cuts at a time when workers in key sectors,
including transport and health are already striking over pay.
And, his family has a little bit of scandal,
which we'll talk about in just a moment.
But I also wanna know, when he was the head of the Treasury in the UK,
he did implement some programs that were positive.
So for instance, they refer to it as the furlough scheme,
meaning since they were shutting down companies, they wanted to encourage those
companies to furlough rather than just fire those employees.
And in the meantime, the government would give grant money to the employees
who were forced to stay home due to shutdowns comering 80% of their wages.
And I think that was not only a popular program,
I think it was a smart program, it helped to lower the unemployment rate.
Which could have been disastrous considering the fact that so
many businesses were shutting down in the middle of the pandemic.
But, it's mixed looks like he and his wife have tried to dodge taxes considerably,
I'll get to that in a moment before I do Jake.
Why don't you jump in?
>> Yeah, first of all, yeah sure.
Let's note, he's pretty and that's gonna actually come into
effect in policy in a second and I'll connect it to.
But first to clarify why he didn't get a single vote even within the tories,
they didn't vote because everyone else dropped out.
His main competitors dropped out, so he very literally did not get a single vote
and became Prime Minister of the UK, which is kind of amazing.
So now on to more important matters, what's he gonna do, right?
So on the upside,
he was against someone trusts policies even though they're in the same party.
Okay, that's good okay.
On the downside, he has very similar disastrous policies cuz they're all right
wing, they're all conservative, they're all rich.
And they all want tax cuts for the rich.
Which leads us to why he's pretty and
one of the reasons he was in trouble, his wife is enormously wealthy.
One of the wealthiest families in originally in India, okay, that obviously
moved to UK also educated in America he also worked at Goldman Sachs.
So I'm sure taxes for the rich, that's sure a giant problem for
him no, he loves it, of course.
Except, he did tax increases for
everyone in the UK when he was the finance minister.
But conveniently left a loophole in there, that his wife and
him could exploit to protect their $835 million dollar fortune.
>> How convenient.
So I actually wanna talk about that more because to me that shows what his
character is and more importantly what his priorities are.
So good looks aside.
His character obviously matters,
especially at a time when people in the UK are struggling to pay energy bills,
struggling to put food on the table for their children and their families.
And so I wanna go to the next clip that kind of touches on the scandal involving
the tax dodging that was taking place within his household let's watch.
>> This spring, his reputation suffered a blow when it emerged his multimillionaire
wife avoided tax in Britain, through non domiciled status.
And that he himself held a US green card for 19 months after becoming chancellor.
After gaining only 43% of the vote against Liz Trust in this summer's runoff,
the former chancellor has been in political retreat.
And no show at the Conservative Party conference.
But since the winner called time on her premiership after only 44 days in office,
the loser has emerged the main contender to replace her.
Now he is replacing her and I wanted to kind of elaborate a little more on his
personal wealth along with what those tax dodging schemes were.
So between them, he and his wife are believed to have built
a combined fortune worth about $820 million.
Around double the wealth of king Charles.
The third and Camila who's the queen consort whatever that means.
Now the sunday times named them the 222nd richest people in the U.
K.
And the the first time around 17 million including a santa Monica penny.
So the couple own a ton of property as well,
including some property here in the United States.
They privately owned four homes worth around $17 million
including a santa Monica penthouse valued at around $7.2 million.
And Son ex wife in regard to the tax dodging that took place
exploited a special legal status to avoid paying British
taxes on the millions she earns in dividends.
Okay so that's just money that she has invested and that money makes money for
her without actually doing anything.
So she earns dividends from the IT business founded by
her father in which she held an estimated $835 million dollar stake.
The opposition labor leader accused of breathtaking,
breathtaking hypocrisy for raising taxes on others as his own family
apparently reduced their own liabilities and soon himself held a U.
S. Green card while serving
as Britain's finance minister.
And that essentially meant that he has declared himself a permanent american
resident for tax reasons while also overseeing tax hikes for everyone else,
it's pretty incredible.
Yeah. And so
that's why I was saying jokingly that him being pretty is is relevant
because they say their wealth combined is between 8 28 50.
then they explained that at least 800 million of that is from her.
So maybe he chipped in maybe, damn, but to be fair to him to be fair to him,
he earned millions working at Goldman Sachs and
he earned those millions through hedge funds.
So he was wealthy himself but certainly not to the same extent as his wife.
Yeah.
And so when you're trying to hook up with someone whose family has
nearly a billion dollars, you better be pretty and
way more importantly you better give him a tax loophole,
higher taxes for everybody else tax loopholes for the rich.
And so, hey, mission accomplished, good son in law gives you that giant gift,
probably worth tens of millions of dollars to the great detriment of everyone else.
Now, look, I don't know if he was supposed to trust his policies,
because on some principled,, reason, or if he's just doing it,
because Trust was one of his main competitors within the tories, right?
But right wings are gonna right wingers are gonna right wing and and
so he's not in favor of, like, what, let's end austerity, and let's make sure we
do the right thing for the british people know he's gonna double down on austerity,
and he's gonna do more spending cuts, and he's gonna take it from the,
from the height of the british people, That's what right
wingers always do in every circumstance, and they're all hypocrites.
So he was also involved in the party gate scandal that had,,
created issues for Boris johnson as well.
Alright, and then finally, guys, look, there's some chance that they,
quote unquote, let him have it, including Boris johnson,
who probably could have won the vote if he pressed forward, but it's not clear, so
why did they, quote unquote, let him have it if they did,
because it's a hot potato right now, the economy is a hot mess.
They can't fix it, and certainly no right wing position is going to fix it, and
they're like, well, I'm I don't know, taxes for the rich, but
trust just tried that.
So they're out of ideas.
That's their only idea.
So my guess is they thought this guy's an outsider, he's super ambitious,
give him the hot potato, have him bungle it, and then we'll blame it on, right.
That's usually wrong political strategy.
He's the prime minister now, and
he's gonna have every opportunity to fix things, including his political career.
Will he actually take advantage of that opportunity?
Unlikely?
Because generally there's nothing wrong with wealthy people at all, right?
But unfortunately in our politics, whether it's US or UK,
a lot of wealthy folks have come in and all they've ever done is look out for
themselves, and he already has a track record of doing that.
So it's unlikely he'll do anything to help the british people.