Voters associate Rishi Sunak with wealth, money and greed, according to a survey carried out for the BBC.
The multi-millionaire prime minister was presented with the public’s brutal verdict during a live interview as the Tory Party conference kicks off in Manchester.
Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the PM was shown a so-called “word cloud” outlining the answers voters gave to the More in Common think-tank when asked their opinion of him.
It showed the most common was “rich people”, followed by “money” and “himself”.
Other answers included “greed”, “elite” “wealth”, “upper class” and “prosperity”.
However, some people answered “fairness”, “equality”, “stability” and “leader”.
During the ill-tempered interview, Kuenssberg told him: “You can see there, rightly or wrongly, what many people associate with you is your personal wealth.
“What does that make you think? Does that worry you if people might think you’re out of touch?
“Or perhaps, you are very wealthy, you could be living on a beach not working at all. A lot of people might think you’ve got all this wealth, you could be living on a beach, not working at all.
“A lot of people might think you’ve got all this wealth, you could do anything at all, good on you for being in public service. What goes through your mind when you see that?”
A clearly-annoyed Sunak said : “My job is to deliver for people. We’ve been talking a lot about this net zero decision ...”
Kuenssberg replied : “Hold on, I think people would like to know what your response is.”
But the PM said: “But this is a great example of it. That was a decision motivated by me wanting to ease the burden on families.”