Rishi’s Sky TV blunder says more about class than cash

It rarely goes well when prime ministers try to sound like the masses. David Cameron forgot which football team he supported. Theresa May’s childhood naughtiness extended to running through wheatfields. Now Rishi Sunak has revealed the great sacrifice his family made when he was a child – depriving him of Sky TV. Thus, again, he has invited ridicule on his pothole-strewn campaign trail.

This latest appearance was in the ITV interview for which he fled the D-Day battlefields of Normandy, attracting much criticism in the process. Presenter Paul Brand asked Sunak about his wealth and whether he’s ever had to go without. He squirmed, laughed nervously and racked his brains for any hint of hardship. “There were all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have,” he replied unconvincingly. “Famously, Sky TV. That was something that we never had growing up.”

“It was clearly a bid to look humble but it came across as so inauthentic,” says PR consultant Mark Borkowski. “Sunak’s messaging and soundbites are awful. Every move he makes proves how out of touch he is.”

Social media immediately erupted with mocking memes. There were pictures of Matt Hancock pretending to cry and Blackadder muttering “Oh God, it’s pathetic.” Older users pointed out how during their own formative years, there were only three channels, no breakfast or daytime TV, and a midnight shutdown soundtracked by the national anthem.

Comedian Adrian Edmondson tweeted: “Dreamt of living in a corridor… used to live in an old water tank on top of a rubbish tip… we were evicted from our hole in the ground… 150 of us, livin in shoebox at middle o’ motorway… AND we didn’t have Sky TV.” Channel 4 News’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy pointed out that the former monarch was Sky-less too: “Even the Queen didn’t have Sky TV for a while. I once discussed this with her briefly at a Buckingham Palace media reception many years ago… I told her she should get Sky+ but we didn’t think she’d be allowed to put a satellite dish on the roof.”

Another X user said: “Rishi Sunak’s parents refusing to pay for Sky TV to hold savings back for his education turned out to be a false economy. For a start, he might have understood the significance of D-Day if he had access to The History Channel.”

A JustGiving donation page for “Rishi Sunak’s Sky TV Fund” has even been set up (with money raised, almost £1,500 so far, actually going to food poverty charity the Trussell Trust). One might suggest that Sunak should stop trying to be a man of the people, and focus on being a better politician – or at least change his advisers.

“The great British public allows people to make mistakes in communications. They can happen to anybody,” Borkowski adds. “But Sunak’s campaign is blunder after blunder. From the rain-soaked announcement, to the Titanic, to D-Day – it just gets worse. I don’t know who’s advising him but they’re deluded. I’ve never witnessed such an embarrassing string of gaffes.”

Leaving aside the PM’s strange use of “famously” – how well-known does Sunak think his life story is? – he ignored the part that old-fashioned class division might have played in his family’s decision.

Sky TV arrived in the UK in 1989, when Sunak would have been eight and attending prep school. Rupert Murdoch launched it with just four channels – the original Sky Channel, Sky Movies, Sky News and Eurosport – and it was initially free to anyone who paid £199 (£510 in today’s money) for a dish and set-top box. Subscription packages weren’t introduced until a few years later.

As white satellite dishes sprang up on house exteriors, Sky was sneeringly nicknamed “council house TV”, a label that it took years to shake off. Uptake was initially slow. Dish sales were half what had been bullishly forecast. Advertisers were reluctant. Word-of-mouth from viewers was underwhelming. Former Labour MP Austin Mitchell, who hosted a politics show on Sky News, once quipped: “What’s the difference between Sky and the Loch Ness monster? More people have seen the monster.”

Meanwhile, rival consortium British Satellite Broadcasting was wasting £650 million flogging its “squarials” (remember them?). With both operations struggling, BSB was swallowed up by Sky in an unequal merger, forming BSkyB. They began giving away set-top boxes and dishes in a bid to boost ratings.

During those early days, its image problem didn’t help. Wealthier families demurred at the notion of needing more than four channels. Neither did they want to ruin their property’s kerb appeal with a vulgar dish. Should-we-or-shouldn’t-we debates nationwide weren’t just about the cost. They were about its cultural cachet, or lack thereof. Who watches that much football? Would MTV distract our little darlings from their homework? What will the neighbours say?

As political commentator Ian Dunt tweeted:

Indeed, there was sniffiness about the entire televisual medium. Before prestige TV and talking-point boxsets, the perception was that TV was for lazy couch potatoes. This was an era when TV sets were hidden in mahogany cupboards and VHS tapes were kept in leather-bound cases to look like books.

Sky was closely associated with Murdoch’s newspapers, especially The Sun. It had the distinct whiff of Page Three, beer and bingo. It’s hard to imagine young Rishi being remotely interested in watching its drama stable, which comprised swords-and-sandals series Xena: Warrior Princess and racy football soap Dream Team.

Within a year of launch, Sky claimed to reach one million UK households – still a niche concern. It only gained serious traction as the 1990s progressed. Football was key to its offering, so Murdoch cannily snapped up exclusive rights to the Premier League when it formed in 1992. Sky also screened WWF wrestling as its popularity peaked. Neither brought in snobs or sceptics but they both added numbers.

By the end of the 1990s, Sky reached six million subscribers. Today there are double that. However, Sunak is wrong to pretend that not having Sky as a child was remotely unusual. The major broadcaster we know today only really came along when he was in his late teens, while he was studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.

So despite his expensive education, the PM has once more missed the point. Sunak’s latest blunder is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Sky, and television generally, was perceived. Given that he attended £49,000-per-annum Winchester College, this surely wasn’t about thrift but snobbery. He didn’t have Sky TV but not because he was too poor. It was because he was too posh.