Rishi Sunak and his wife have ditched George Osborne’s “very tired” furnishings in favour of opulent curtains and jewel coloured sofas for their Downing Street flat.
The couple have chosen to use the No 10 flat where they lived when Mr Sunak was Chancellor, rather than moving to the larger flat above No 11 which has been used by prime ministers since 1997.
But Mr Sunak, his heiress wife Akshata Murty and their daughters Krishna, 11, and Anoushka, 9, will be living in “far less glitz” than Boris Johnson’s family as they seek to move Downing Street on from the “court of Carrie” era, according to a profile in society bible Tatler.
The Sunaks funded the remodelling themselves, in contrast to the row over Mr Johnson’s attempts to get a Tory donor to pay for a lavish revamp of his home.
The couple were joint 222nd on the Sunday Times Rich List of the UK’s wealthiest people, with an estimated personal fortune of £730million.
Ms Murty is the daughter of tech billionaire NR Naranya Murty, founder of Infosys and one of India’s richest men. She was forced into a U-turn after it emerged that she held “non-dom” status, meaning she didn’t have to pay UK tax on overseas income.
John Challis, an upholsterer from the PM’s Richmond constituency who worked on the Downing Street refurbishment, told Tatler how the flat was remodelled to update tired decor left behind by Tory Chancellor George Osborne.
He said: “We made long, fully interlined curtains for all five windows overlooking the garden, hand-pleated and held back with heavy coordinating tassels in red, gold and the ivory of the damask. The ornate cornicing was hand-gilded and a rug was commissioned to almost fill the room.”
The No10 flat was “all very tired”, according to Mr Challis. “Let’s say the blinds were not of the level we would put in.”
Asked if it rivalled Johnson’s luxe revamp, Mr Challis and his wife Alice said: “Oooh, no... Far less glitz.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who moved into the No11 flat where the Johnsons used to live, recently joked that the lavish wallpaper - famously used to transform the flat from the “John Lewis nightmare” left behind by Theresa May - had begun to peel off the walls.
Upmarket interior designer Lulu Lytle oversaw the redecoration of Mr Johnson’s flat, which cost at least £112,000 - well beyond the £30,000 annual public grant PMs are given to decorate their living quarters.
Mr Johnson came under fire for trying to get Tory donor Lord Brownlow to fund the lavish revamp. He eventually paid the costs himself after a major backlash. But the Tory party was fined £17,800 by the Electoral Commission for breaching electoral law over the way the money was recorded.
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