Mocking JustGiving page raises thousands for Sunak’s Sky TV fund

Emily Price

A satirical JustGiving page called ‘Rishi Sunak’s Sky TV Fund‘ has raised over £7,000 after the Prime Minister claimed he went without as a child.

Mr Sunak told ITV News on Wednesday (June 12) that his parents put everything they had into his education and as a result sacrificed “lots of things”.

Giving an example, he said: “All sorts of things like lots of people. There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have. Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually.”

The PM attended fee-paying Winchester College as a youngster. His father was a GP, while his mother ran her own pharmacy.

A photograph of the pharmacy taken after May 2008 was shared online this week which appeared to show a satellite dish mounted to the wall outside.

Mr Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty are estimated to be worth £651m.

The cash pledged to the tongue-in-cheek fundraiser will actually go to The Trussell Trust charity to help fund food banks.

‘Deprived’

Launching the JustGiving page James Barisic said: “Millions of people across the UK were heartbroken to read the recent interview with Rishi Sunak when he revealed that, during his childhood, he had no access to Sky TV.

“Unlike thousands of children, Rishi’s deprived childhood included no satellite TV – a fate surely shared with his poverty-stricken friends who were also students at the private Winchester School.

“Despite this unimaginably tough start, Rishi worked hard and rose to a position where, as an investment banker, he earned millions after he bet on a bank that was subsequently bailed out by taxpayers.

“Rishi is now facing more hardship. He is down to just one helicopter and he could soon be out of a job. Forced to live on just a PM’s pension and quite a few tens of millions in the bank, Rishi could once again be deprived of Sky TV.”

The fund has so far raised £7,600 with 555 people donating.

Netflix

Thanking supporters, Mr Barisic said: “We have now surpassed the amount we need to pay for Sky TV, including sports, movies and the mucky channels, for Rishi in all of his properties.

“We have also reached enough to ensure he has Netflix and a VPN for when he goes to California. We are now raising money for a trebuchet to launch Farage and Truss (1 man & 1 woman because I’m woke) directly into space to do maintenance on the Sky satellite.”

Between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, food banks in the Trussell Trust’s UK-wide network distributed more than 3.1 million emergency food parcels.

This is an increase of 94% over the past five years. More than 1.1 million of these parcels were distributed for children.

You can donate to Rishi Sunak’s Sky TV fund here.