Rishi Sunak wants you to think he’s just a regular guy. He wears jeans and sliders, works late nights, stops at the petrol station on the way home to fill up the Kia Rio.

The problem, as you probably know by now, is that the Kia isn’t his. In truth he owns four cars, including a Range Rover based at his home in his Yorkshire constituency. That home is one of his ‘at least four’ properties. His wife, Akshata Murty, is said to be richer than the Queen. Having made millions in a past life as a banker and hedge fund partner, and now enjoying both a generous MP’s salary and a generous Chancellor’s salary, Sunak is not your average Briton.

That reality is becoming clearer in light of the growing cost of living crisis and Sunak’s spectacular failure to do anything about it. By previous standards, for Sunak’s PR team, this has been a very bad week.

Back in 2020, Rishi Sunak emerged as the Tory Party’s rising star. The personal air of competency many assigned him in combination with an Instagrammable aesthetic saw him enjoy the highest satisfaction ratings for a Chancellor since Denis Healey in 1978. This was buttressed by an extraordinary display of admiration from the mainstream media during the pandemic, even by its usual standards: the BBC characterised him as Superman, and the Times adorned him with a halo.

Much of this adoration was a result of measures brought in during Covid. Furlough and Eat Out to Help Out both became symbols of the Sunak brand, creating the image of a Chancellor prepared to do what was necessary to help even when it went against his personal political instincts. He earned wide renown as a prime minister-in-waiting, and ended last year as the most popular politician in the country.

On reflection, however, the limits of these schemes and the other measures put in place during Covid are part of the reason Brand Sunak is now undergoing reassessment. The furlough scheme was crucial, but it also excluded three million self-employed, allowed many to spend months earning just eighty percent of minimum wage—with low-paid workers the least likely to have the twenty percent topped up—and delayed announcements about extensions just long enough to cause widespread confusion and job losses. Eat Out to Help Out reportedly had a limited impact on hospitality sector finances, and was later linked to an increase in Covid rates of up to seventeen percent.

Perhaps more representative of Sunak’s politics was what he chose not to do. He did not fix the pitiful rates of statutory sick pay which saw millions forced to choose between going to work sick during a pandemic and falling behind on bills or rent. He also did not stop the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit, the biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security in Britain since World War II. It is this tendency for inaction that is the Chancellor’s true norm.

The tide of public opinion began to turn in earnest last month, in answer to Sunak’s pathetic response (or lack thereof) to the energy crisis. Consisting as it did of little more than a £200 loan to fight an average £600 bill hike, with the potential for that to go higher in October, Sunak swapped out the superhero costume for the epithet ‘Wonga Chancellor’.

Then, speaking in committee this week, Sunak said he was ‘comfortable’ with the choices he’d made regarding last week’s Spring Statement. The Statement laid out some minor provisions, including cutting 5p off a litre of fuel, axing VAT on solar panels, and raising the National Insurance Contribution threshold. But it did very little for those earning less than the current threshold, and critics have labelled the Chancellor a ‘fiscal illusionist’ for pledging tax cuts while actually increasing the overall tax burden. As James Meadway noted, even with the Chancellor’s new provisions, the average family can expect to be up to £1,000 worse off this year.

Again, it was what Sunak did not do with this budget that told us what we needed to know. Writing in Tribune ahead of the event, Zarah Sultana laid out five approaches the Chancellor could have adopted to limit the impact of the cost of living crisis on the most vulnerable. Sunak could have levied a windfall tax on the catastrophic profits of energy giants to help subsidise household bills, scrapped the National Insurance hike, and instituted an uplift for benefits and pensions. He did not. He also did not announce any new funding for education, health, or other public services. But at least he’s comfortable.

That comfort is another marker of his difference with the majority of people in Britain. Just six percent of respondents to a snap YouGov poll taken after the Statement said Sunak had done enough. The opinions of much of the rest are likely to be validated in the months to come: Britain is set to see the largest drop in living standards since records began, while millions are already struggling to eat and heat their homes. Supermarket bosses have warned that they’re losing customers to food banks; others have reportedly turned away orders of vegetables on the basis that buyers can’t afford the energy to cook them.

It’s in light of this crisis that Sunak’s wealth is coming under increasing fire. The £180 thermoflask, the £795 jacket, the four family cars are increasingly held up as indicators of how insulated our Chancellor is from the crisis he refuses to help limit. No-one really believes this man has noticed the effects of prices creeping up in his own life.

The truth, reflected in the polls, is now obvious. Sunak was never different. He might have a slicker PR operation, a fancy signature attached to his branded materials, but he’s ultimately a leading member of a government predicated on privilege and personal untouchabilty. None of this group have an ounce of either experience or empathy when it comes to how most people live their lives, let alone in a cost of living crisis. For people like Rishi Sunak, this is all just a game—and on their field, an energy bill hike or a small fixed-penalty notice isn’t really a penalty at all.