Why Rishi Sunak will struggle to rid the Conservatives of sleaze, according to expert panel

Rishi Sunak will struggle to rid the Conservatives of their reputation for sleaze, because he has failed to make a sincere apology for mistakes that have been made, according to an expert panel at an Independent online event this week.

Most of the scandals that have marred the first few months of Sunak’s premiership were legacies from Boris Johnson, said David Gauke, a former Tory cabinet minister, but he said that the new prime minister had made too little of his own resignation from Johnson’s government over ethical standards. He should have presented himself more as cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor.

Nimesh Shah, CEO of Blick Rothenberg, the tax advisers, said that Sunak was “naive” to think that people would accept the tax advantages of his wife’s non-dom status, which she gave up after it was reported by The Independent last year.

Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, accepted that there was some unfairness in Sunak being tainted by the failings of others, but insisted that he didn’t help himself by refusing to acknowledge how out of touch he seemed to so many voters.

She said that she thought that Nadhim Zahawi had been a good vaccines minister, but she simply could not understand why he thought he could stay in office after paying a penalty to HMRC over such a large tax bill.

Sean O’Grady, associate editor of The Independent, said that Keir Starmer didn’t need to exploit financial scandals and allegations of unethical conduct to label the Tories with “sleaze”, as the Tories were doing a highly effective job of that themselves.

The panel generally disagreed with suggestions from Independent readers that either all MPs or all UK citizens should be required to make their tax returns public.

Shah said that there would not be much useful information in many MPs’ returns – he argued in favour of the principle of confidentiality about financial matters, saying that we should rely on regulators and professionals, including accountants, to ensure that standards were observed.

As an aside on the non-dom question, Shah said that he thought Labour’s plans to abolish non-dom status could raise the £3bn a year that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, claims – a sum that is disputed by the Conservatives.

He said that non-dom status was archaic, depending as it does on one’s father’s country of birth, but that a Labour government would need some kind of tax incentives to encourage rich people to move to the UK and set up businesses here.

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