Voters are turning on “rich man” Rishi Sunak as the prime minister braces himself for defeat in three crucial by-elections later this month.
Members of the public believe the PM and his family’s personal wealth is a major drawback as they struggle to cope with the cost of living crisis.
Focus groups carried out by the More In Common campaign group, reported by The Sunday Times, suggest the Tories are on course to lose in Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on July 20.
Many of those who took part in the surveys highlighted the fact that Sunak is a multi-millionaire whose wife is also extremely wealthy.
Samantha, a 39-year-old teacher from Somerton and Frome, said: “It’s hard having such a rich man in charge of your country when your country is, and the people in your country are, kind of falling apart. It makes him very unrelatable.”
Min, a swimming teacher from Uxbridge, said: “If you look at him and his family . . . he’s not even in a position to understand, is he?”
She add: “He’s just not a genuine person. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”
Jamie from Uxbridge accused Sunak of “telling everyone to hold their nerve while he is sitting high and mighty getting his butler to do what he wants for him”.
Asked what kind of animal Sunak would be, Craig, 39, a software tester from Selby, said: “I’d probably say a dodo for Rishi, because he’s pretty much dead to me like a dodo.”
Luke Tryl, More In Common’s UK director, who sat in on the focus group discussions, told The Sunday Times: ”These were by far the worst set of groups we’ve done on impressions of Rishi Sunak.
“Whereas previously people have been willing to give him some benefit of the doubt, and usually fell back on the fact that even if he’s out of touch he’s competent and the best person to clear up the mess from Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, things have shifted.
“The cost of living crisis being compounded with the mortgage crisis has exacerbated Sunak’s personal weaknesses.”
The findings echo those from focus groups carried out by More In Common in the run up to May’s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost more than 1,000 seats.
One member of the public said the PM was “out of touch with the people and he’s far too rich for my liking”.
“Someone who’s grown up within the wealth that surrounds him and always has done can’t possibly understand what it’s like for somebody like me,” one female voter added.
Another voter said: ”“He’s a billionaire. He likes to proclaim he’s from Yorkshire and ‘I know the price of a beer’, but I’m not so sure he does.”
However, Gabriel Milland, partner for research at Portland Communications, told HuffPost UK: “There’s a danger of over-stating all this though. What the public absolutely do want is the sense that the government on their side and doing stuff to help them.
“They’re not that bothered if Sunak himself is facing the same sort of worries over his gas bill that they are.”