Tony Blair’s multi-millionaire son Euan joins multi-millionaire Chancellor Rishi Sunak to urge young jobless people to try their hand at apprenticeships
- PM’s son Blair is chief executive of Multiverse, in which he has £70m stake
- Sunak is ex-banker who married an Indian tech billionaire’s daughter
- Joined forces to back Plan for Jobs programme to stem UK unemployment
Tony Blair’s entrepreneur son Euan lined up alongside fellow multi-millionaire Rishi Sunak today to encourage young people who are out of a job to try their hand at an apprenticeship.
Mr Blair, 37, the founder and chief executive of Multiverse, a firm which offers people non-university career paths, joined the Chancellor to back his Plan for Jobs programme to stem the UK’s burgeoning unemployment rate.
The eldest son of the former prime minister used the event, broadcast live on Twitter by Mr Sunak, to say ‘there are opportunities people can pursue’ despite the economic paralysis affecting the UK.
Both men have taken full advantage of the opportunities life has thrown at them. Mr Blair, like his siblings, is a millionaire through property alone after Mr Blair and Cherie gave them a leg up on to the property ladder.
And last month Multiverse revealed it had secured £32million from investors, who have valued it at a reported $200million (£147million) – with his share worth a estimated £70million.
Mr Sunak is a GP’s son who married an Indian tech billionaire’s daughter and built a multi million-pound fortune before becoming chancellor aged 39.
A graduate of £42,000-per-year Winchester College and Oxford University, where he studied PPE, he is believed to be one of the richest members of Parliament, and lives with his family in a magnificent Georgian manor house in the small village of Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire.
Mr Blair, 37, the founder and chief executive of Multiverse, a firm which offers people non-university career paths, joined the Chancellor to back his Plan for Jobs programme to stem the UK’s burgeoning unemployment rate.
Multiverse, originally launched by Mr Blair (pictured with co-founder Sophie Adelman) as WhiteHat, boasts a client network of more than 300 firms in Europe including Facebook, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, Fujitsu, Capita, Kantar, Skanska, Citi and Microsoft
As a young boy, Euan was occasionally photographed outside the steps of Downing Street with his mother, father and siblings Nicholas and Kathryn (all pictured). His youngest brother, Leo, was born in 2000
In the Zoom call meeting this afternoon, Mr Blair said: ‘It may seem at the moment there’s not a lot to be optimistic about given the economic challenges and global pandemic, but there are opportunities people can pursue.
‘There are about 100,000 unfilled data roles and there are lots of organisations offering people the chance to retrain or re-skill with their current employer, or if they are out of work.
‘I would strongly advocate anyone looking to change career to explore an apprenticeship.
‘The fact is we are all going to need to embark on a new career at various points in this journey – most of us are going to have multiple different careers.’
£4.6m: Eldest son Euan Blair, 37, is believed to live in a plush townhouse estimated to be worth a staggering £4.6 million – part of the family’s £37million property empire
Mr Sunak added that an apprenticeship was ‘not something lesser, it’s just different way to get the skills you need to success in life.’
‘Young people we know are the ones most affected by what’s happening economically.
‘They disproportionately work in the sectors that are being closed down, that are not able to open and fully function – the ones leaving college or university for the first time are entering a really difficult labour market, and we know from the evidence that young people are more likely to be furloughed.
‘When you put all that together, it’s not great for young people.’
The ‘Maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales’ and the PM’s millionaire son
Rishi Sunak, a GP’s son who married an Indian tech billionaire’s daughter and built a multi million-pound fortune that saw him dubbed the ‘Maharaja of the Dales’, enjoyed a meteoric rise to become Chancellor at the age of just 39.
A graduate of £42,000-per-year Winchester College and Oxford University, where he studied PPE, he is believed to be one of the richest members of Parliament, and lives with his family in a magnificent Georgian manor house in the small village of Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire.
His Instagram account depicts a sport-loving family man who dotes on the two daughters he shares with his wife, Akshata Murthy, whose father NR Narayana Murthy is India’s sixth-wealthiest man thanks to his ownership of multinational business technology giant Infosys.
A multi-millionaire in his own right thanks to his investment career, Mr Sunak was known to be close to his former boss Sajid Javid, with the pair joining each other on nights out and sharing Star Wars jokes on Twitter.
Mr Sunak has experienced a dizzying rise since taking William Hague’s Yorkshire seat of Richmond at the 2015 general election, which is when he first acquired his ‘Maharaja of the Dales’ moniker.
His father in law, self-made billionaire Murthy Sr, is a household name in India after making his fortune through consulting giant Infosys.
Akshata herself runs fashion label Akshata Designs and is also a director of a venture capital firm founded by her father in 2010. Her shareholding in Infosys alone is estimated at £185million.
The staunch Brexiteer was promoted to Boris Johnson’s Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in July 2019. He replaced Mr Javid in February after a row over advisors and has been in the hotseat as coronavirus swept across the country.
Mr Sunak was born in Southampton and describes his hobbies as ‘keeping fit, cricket, football and movies’.
A fan of Southampton FC, he described his childhood hero as footballer Matt Le Tissier.
‘One of my prized possessions is an 18th birthday card signed by the entire Saints team, but Matt in the middle there, which I’ve still got,’ Mr Sunak told the BBC in an October 2019 interview.
Euan Blair is the eldest son of former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and wife Cherie.
He was born in London in 1984, thirteen years before his father’s New Labour stormed to power in a landslide election victory in 1997.
As a young boy, he was occasionally photographed outside the steps of Downing Street with his mother, father and siblings Nicholas and Kathryn. His youngest brother, Leo, was born in 2000.
As a young boy, he was occasionally photographed outside the steps of Downing Street with his mother, father and siblings Nicholas and Kathryn
Euan attended catholic boys school, The London Oratory School, in Fulham, and was made a headboy.
Blair Junior, as he was sometimes referred, later attended Bristol University in the UK and prestigious Yale in the US before opting for a career in investment banking with Morgan Stanley.
In 2013 Euan married long-term girlfriend Suzanne Ashman – the daughter of motor-racing entrepreneur Jonathan Ashman – who is a partner at venture capital firm Local Globe.
The couple were wed at the All Saints Parish Church in Wooton Underwood, Buckinghamshire before heading to a reception at the nearby Blair family mansion.
Later that year the pair moved into a £3.6million Georgian townhouse in Marylebone – near to the headquarters of his edutech start-up firm WhiteHat.
The company was launched in 2016. It has since been re-branded as Multiverse.
In 2017, at the age of 29, wife Suzanne was listed as a prominent European financier on prestigious business publication Forbes’s 30 under 30 list.
In 2018, Euan became an uncle after brother Nicholas and his wife Alexandra welcomed a baby girl – the first grandchild of Tony and Cherie.