US president Joe Biden has joked about Rishi Sunak’s home in California – a perhaps unhelpful reminder of a controversial issue that undermined the prime minister’s early Downing Street aspirations.
The pair were meeting on Monday following the announcement of a submarine pact between the US, UK and Australia in San Diego, California, and came as Biden said he intends to visit Northern Ireland after being invited to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
“First of all, I want to welcome you back to California,” Biden said. “He’s a Stanford man, and he still has a home here in California.
“That’s why I’m being very nice to you, maybe you can invite me to your home in California. But all kidding aside, I think it’s an historic day for our countries.”
After studying for a degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, Sunak took an MBA at Stanford University in California where he met his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of India’s sixth richest man.
It emerged last year that Sunak retained a US green card while he was chancellor, which damaged his position as a frontrunner to replace Boris Johnson as PM.
In April, Sunak, an MP since 2015, released a statement admitting holding the permanent resident card to the States until around October – 12 months after becoming chancellor, in February 2020.
It came as he was under intense scrutiny after it was revealed Murty, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, held the non-dom status exempting her from paying tax in the UK on foreign income.
The couple reportedly own a $7.2m (£5.5m) penthouse in Santa Monica, a wealthy Californian enclave.