Penny Mordaunt blasts Rishi Sunak over D-Day snub in bitter TV conflict
Penny Mordaunt has said it was “wrong” that Rishi Sunak left the D-Day commemoration in Normandy as she came under fire.
The Tory frontbencher, tipped as a future party leader, faced criticism from all during a bitter TV debate. She told a BBC audience:“What happened was completely wrong and the Prime Minister has rightly apologised for that. Apologise to veterans, but also to all of us because he was representing all of us.”
It came after Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said Mr Sunak had “deserted” veterans and accused the PM of not being “patriotic”.Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper described her grandfather’s horrific ordeal, branding Mr Sunak’s snub “utterly unforgivable”.
She said: “I started yesterday morning watching a recording made by the Royal Mint of my late grandfather, where he recounts catching his best friend who fell from the top of a Sherman tank. He was shot in the head and as he waded through the water, he recounted, in his words, men blown to pieces, hands, legs and heads.
“If he had been there yesterday, I’d seen the Prime Minister walk away from him. I would have found that completely, as I do now, find it completely and utterly unforgivable.”
The remarks came as politicians clashed over the state of the armed forces, which have seen numbers drop to just 72,000 under the Conservatives. Angela Rayner said the Tories have made the UK a “laughing stock” on the world stage. She said her brother served in Iraq and she “won’t be lectured” on defence by Ms Mordaunt.
Key figures from the UK’s major parties – including Angela Rayner, Penny Mordaunt and Nigel Farage – are taking part in a head-to-head BBC debate. They are joined by Daisy Cooper of the Liberal Democrats, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer, Stephen Flynn for the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth.
It comes on a nightmare day for the Tories, which saw Rishi Sunak forced to apologise for disrespecting World War Two veterans after leaving a D-Day commemoration early. And to make matters worse he was heckled on a campaign event in Wiltshire, where GP Dr Jane Millais told him: “The NHS is disintegrating.”
This morning the PM took the unusual step of issuing an apology for his “mistake”, which he repeated in an awkward exchange with broadcasters. Mr Sunak insisted he “stuck to the itinerary that had been set for me as Prime Minister weeks ago” – suggesting he had never intended to go to the centrepiece of the D-Day commemorations, even before he called the election.
“On reflection, that was a mistake and I apologise”, Mr Sunak said, as he urged people not to “politicise this”. He was given a stinging rebuke by Normandy veteran Ken Hay, 98, who said “he lets the country down”.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the snub had “brought shame” to the office of Prime Minister, as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said of Mr Sunak: “He basically is not a patriotic leader of the Conservative Party“.
Keir Starmer, who stayed on in France to mingle with Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky, said Mr Sunak “will have to answer for his own actions”, but “for me there was nowhere else I was going to be”.
