UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been issued a £100 fine after he was seen in a short social media video not wearing a seatbelt in the back of a moving car.
Sunak, who took over from Liz Truss as Prime Minister in October of last year, posted a video to his Instagram on Thursday in order to promote the latest round of government funding and infrastructure support in the North of England. In the short clip, Sunak was seen in the back of a moving car while not wearing a seatbelt.
After the clip spread and was seen millions of times, Lancashire Police, the police force of the area where Sunak was travelling, announced that they would investigate the clip, and subsequently confirmed that Sunak would receive a £100 fixed penalty notice.
In a statement, 10 Downing Street confirmed that the Prime Minister “fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologised,” and that he would pay the fine. If Sunak refused to pay and contested the fine, it would increase to £500 if the matter went to court.
Sunak had previously been fined, along with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for allegedly breaking lockdown rules when attending a birthday party for Johnson in Downing Street in June of 2020. The current Prime Minister is now the second to ever be fined by the police while in office.
“From partygate to seatbelt gate, these Conservative politicians are just taking the British people for fools,” said Daisy Cooper, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats. “Whilst they continue to behave as though it’s one rule for them and another for everyone else, this fine is a reminder that the Conservatives eventually get their comeuppance.”
Scott Benton MP, the Conservative representative for Blackpool South in Lancashire, said that his local police force were simply wasting their time dealing with the complaint. “The vast majority of people would think that politically motivated complaints about a seatbelt are not good use of frontline resources,” Benton said.
This news and commentary by Jack Hadfield originally appeared on Valiant News.
