ANDREW NEIL: Sunak has let down our veterans, the King and the nation
When historians come to decide the moment it became certain, beyond peradventure, that the General Election of 2024 would consign Rishi Sunak and his Tory party to the knacker’s yard, they will chose the afternoon of June 6, when he skipped part of the D-Day commemorations in Normandy to return to the campaign trail in Britain for a TV interview.
In truth, his chances of winning on July 4 were always negligible. But this has made defeat — crushing, humiliating defeat — inevitable. The crass stupidity of it is unfathomable. In what possible political universe could this have been thought to be a sensible move?
No matter. It’s over for the Tory party in this election. It’s even more terminal for Sunak. His career in frontline politics (perhaps in politics, period) is finished for ever. If there wasn’t an election looming in under four weeks, it would be a resignation matter.
I see some asking how his advisers could allow him to cut short his Normandy visit. That’s irrelevant. You should not need any advisers to know the very thought is beyond the pale.
Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty chat to the Queen in Normandy yesterday – before the Prime Minister left commemorations
It looks as if he thought he could duck out early because he’d attended the more specifically British parts of the ceremonies, Andrew Neil writes
Not when it’s D-Day, one of a handful of the most important turning points in our long island history. Not when it’s the 80th anniversary of that historic event, the last major marking to be attended by that dying breed of brave veterans who were actually there on the momentous day.
If you don’t realise that, if it’s not just a natural, in-built, non-negotiable part of who you are, then you are not fit to be our prime minister. No amount of apology can change that.
The Tory faithful knows that and is in despair. ‘It’s almost as if Sunak is inviting Reform to overtake the Tories for second place in the polls,’ one bitter and bewildered Tory activist said to me. ‘Is he now actively making sure we lose the election?’ pondered another out loud.
Even before yesterday’s catastrophic blunder, Reform was breathing down the Tories’ neck. It’s been invigorated by Nigel Farage returning to the helm and deciding after all to run in staunchly pro-Brexit Clacton. One poll on Wednesday put Reform only two points behind the Tories. Others also showed it to be a growing threat.
There’s every chance Reform will now leapfrog the Tories in the polls. Farage will milk this for all it’s worth. Who can blame him? He’s already pointed out he helped raise £100,000 to pay for the veterans to go to Normandy and had himself attended in a private capacity. There will be much more along these lines.
Getting the second biggest share of the vote on July 4 doesn’t mean Reform would be rewarded with lots of seats in the Commons, such are vagaries of our first-past-the-post voting system.
The Reform vote is too thinly spread to elect more than a handful of MPs at most. But the Tory humiliation would be complete if Reform got more votes come polling day.
It’s now perfectly possible. Reform appeals precisely to those older, working-class voters most likely to be offended by Sunak’s D-Day dodge. They voted for Boris Johnson in 2019. They won’t be voting for Rishi Sunak in 2024.
The northern Tory Blue Wall of small ‘c’ conservative voters, many former Labour voters, erected by Johnson almost five years ago, will come tumbling down on July 4. Keir Starmer’s newly ‘patriotic’ Labour party will likely be the main beneficiary. But Farage’s Reform will also enjoy rich pickings from the Tory carcass.
Pensioners are patriots. They liked it when Sunak said the Tories would reintroduce a form of National Service because it would ‘give young people a sense of patriotism and pride in their country, its history and traditions’. Fair enough. But when it came to sticking around in Normandy to honour that pride and history Sunak’s response was ‘no thanks’.
It looks as if he thought he could duck out early because he’d attended the more specifically British parts of the ceremonies and yesterday afternoon was concentrating on the Omaha beach landings, where the Americans took a terrible pounding. But this is to show an ignorance of history. Britain’s role was an omnipresent one on that fateful day all these years ago.
Even before yesterday’s catastrophic blunder, Reform, led by Nigel Farage, was breathing down the Tories’ neck
Our national mood is to diminish everything about our past. Moreover, modern history is too often seen through the cultural lens of American film and TV. Think The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers. Sometimes you’d think we had only a walk on part on D-Day. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was the Royal Navy which provided most of the maritime protection for the amphibious invaders making their perilous way across the Channel, including the Americans landing on Omaha.
It was the RAF which provided the air cover for the invading troops, including the Americans. Along with our Canadian allies, the British Commonwealth committed more troops to D-Day than America.
It was an insult to our allies that Sunak was not alongside the presidents of France and America to remember the carnage of Omaha. It was an allied invasion. We were in it together.
It downplayed the pivotal role Britain played across the whole operation. A country which forgets or diminishes what is the best of its past, does not deserve a future.
You’d think a British prime minister, of all people, would be the first to realise that. Sunak says: ‘On reflection it was a mistake not to stay in France longer — and I apologise for that.’ No such reflection should ever have been necessary.
Let us just take a moment to consider the import of what it being commemorated here. The two most significant events in the past 100 years of our history are the Battle of Britain and D-Day. Only four years separate them and they still help define what we are now.
In 1940, over the skies of southern England ‘The Few’, as Winston Churchill referred to our fighter pilots, prevented the Nazi Luftwaffe from pummelling Britain into submission. Hitler’s hordes had subjugated most of Europe. But we would not fall. That’s what made D-Day possible.
Britain became a massive aircraft carrier for the marshalling of British and allied forces, above all the Americans, for the liberation of occupied western Europe from Nazi tyranny, starting in the summer of 1944. Such an invasion, even with American might, could never have been launched from the other side of the Atlantic.
That is why it is still important to honour the bravery, tenacity and sacrifice of what is now regarded as the Greatest Generation — those born into the misery and deprivation of the First World War, who struggled to put bread on the table during the Great Depression but who nevertheless gave us victory in the Battle of Britain and on D-Day against the greatest evil the world has known.
Every subsequent generation, from my own onwards, owes them a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay. It is one of the privileges of being prime minister that you get to represent us in showing that thanks. That is why Sunak’s absence yesterday afternoon is unforgivable.
If there had been, God forbid, a sudden terrorist outrage on British soil then of course the PM would have had to dash home. Even an unspecified threat requiring him to lead an emergency meeting Cobra meeting could have required an early departure. We all understand that even honouring the past sometimes has to take second place to dealing with the challenges of the present.
But that is not why Sunak returned prematurely to our shores. He did so to quibble about Labour’s tax plans and defend his party’s contested sums about them — all in a pre-recorded TV interview that won’t even be broadcast in full until next week. It was base politics when national remembrance, dignity and pride were the order of the day.
The PM has let down our veterans. He has let down the King, whose own performance in Normandy was immaculate. He has let down the country. And, as I’m sure he now realises, he’s let down himself. It will haunt him for what remains of the campaign.
It is a sad ending for a fundamentally decent person, from which there can be no coming back — and a miserable ending to the dying days of what has become a miserable Tory administration.
