A video has been shared widely on social media with claims that it shows new United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak dancing at a party in a club.
The video indeed shows a topless man resembling Sunak dancing at a club in Ibiza in Spain. A user sharing it said "Rishi Sunak hearing Liz Truss has resigned."
However, a fact check showed that it's not Sunak in the video, but a doppelgänger. Despite the claims, the video is also not recent. It was shared by a verified Instagram account on July 2019.
In India, the video has also been shared comparing Indian politicians with those in the West. A user said that while Sunak could dance like this, no Indian politician could behave like this, and, if seen dancing like this, they would have to quit politics.
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"See here the Prime Minister of Britain who is dancing. Our country is so backward. If any leader dances like this, he would be defamed so much that he would have to quit politics and he would even consider dying from tension. Learn from them how to live. If you are in politics, does it mean that one should forget other talents? Feel ashamed at your narrow thinking," said a user named Shweta Upadhyay II in Hindi.
Despite the well-meaning message, Upadhyay was wrong as the person in the video was not Sunak. The person in the video is an unnamed reveller at a club in Spain's Ibiza, according to fact checking website Boom Live, which further reported that the video of the man was shared in 2019 by the club's owner Wayne Lineker.
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This is not even the first time that the video has apparently gone viral. The British paper Daily Mail fact checked the video in January, noting that, "A video of a Rishi Sunak doppelgänger dancing at Wayne Lineker's Ibiza club has set social media alight. The footage shows a man, who has since been dubbed 'Raving Rishi', cutting shapes at a sunny party surrounded by hundreds of party-goers."
The paper noted that Sunak is a teetotal. The man said to be Sunak in the viral clip appears to hold an alcoholic beverage in the hand as he dances.
Despite the virality of the video, the identity of the real man in the clip is not yet known. But it has been reliably reported that he is not Sunak.
