RISHI Sunak should consider his position as Chancellor in the wake of the scandals around his and his family’s tax arrangements, Ian Blackford has said.
The top Tory has seen his hopes of being prime minister dashed after it was revealed that he was a named beneficiary of an offshore trust in a tax haven, and that he and his wife Akshata Murty held US green cards while he was living on Downing Street.
Furthermore, Murty paid a £30,000 annual fee to retain her “non-domiciled” tax status, allowing her to avoid paying millions to the Treasury her husband runs.
The SNP’s Westminster leader told Sky News that Sunak’s behaviour was part of a pattern which was affecting the standards across government.
READ MORE: MP taken aback as Sky host suggests it's 'sexist' to look into Sunak family tax affairs
Blackford said: “They have a sense of entitlement …
“There has to be honour and dignity. People that cling on to office when they're clearly in the wrong, that sets the tone, that sets the culture.”
He added: “This is a government that stinks to high heaven. It’s about corruption, it’s about sleaze, and this is just the latest example of it. Quite frankly, the sooner that they’re all gone the better.”
Blackford said that while Murty and Sunak’s tax affairs may not have been against the law, they represented a “failure of morality and ethics”.
“It's not about the rules. It's about a serious lack of judgment,” he said.
“And on the back of that, quite frankly, not only are we looking at a man that has no future as a potential prime minister, that has gone, he ought to really consider his position on the back of this.
“Quite simply, he and others in the leadership of the Tory party just don’t get it when they demonstrate that there is one rule for them and another rule for the rest of the public that are struggling through this Tory cost of living crisis.”
“It's right that people are saying that when you fail to live up to the standards that the rest of us are expected to do so, quite simply, you should go,” he added.
READ MORE: Multi-millionaire Rishi Sunak's ‘normal guy’ act isn't fooling anyone
The Telegraph reported "friends" of Sunak as saying he might stand down at the next General Election if he thought his chances of being Prime Minister had evaporated.
A source told that paper: “He isn’t the sort of person who would stay in Parliament for another 10 years waiting for his chance to come around again.
“If it became apparent he wasn’t going to be prime minister, he would just go.”
However, reports say that sources in the Treasury believe Sunak will stay on and fight for his career.
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