Military veteran Dame Kelly Holmes has slammed Rishi Sunak for “disrespecting” D-Day heroes after he left the 80th anniversary commemorations in Normandy early.
The Olympian, who is Honorary Colonel of the Royal Armoured Training Corps, said following the Prime Minister’s latest blunder: “We need change now.”
National treasure Dame Kelly, who became the first British woman to win double gold at the Olympics 20 years ago, also slammed Mr Sunak’s National Service plan and accused him of “vilifying” marginalised communities like trans people for political gain.
She said: “What I hate is all the bullsh*t that comes out of the Conservatives mouths about what they’re going to do now if they get in at the next election, but why didn’t they do them all this time while they’ve been in power? Veterans have been suffering for years with homelessness, housing, mental health issues and now all of a sudden their care and support for them is important and in the agenda because of the D-Day celebrations, why wasn’t it a priority over the past 14 years?
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“The fact is, it’s 80 years of D-Day and we know that at the next celebration, in five or 10 years, it’s very very unlikely that we will have many or any veterans left from Great Britain and it’s up to us to keep that memory alive. Some of them drowned before they even got to the beach, but it was clearly not that important to our Prime Minister when he didn’t even stay.
“That, at that point yesterday was so emotional. You look at it and you think, we were part of any allyship that gave certain countries their freedom. The sacrifice is that we were sending kids, 16, 17 year old kids. Give people respect where it was due. Other people stayed on. I don’t know what he was coming home for and I don’t really care.
“If he was coming home for a media interview that could have waited until tomorrow. It’s disrespectful. It is.”
The Loose Women presenter, 54, who served for 10 years in the Army and has long been an active campaigner on veterans’ rights, dubbed the proposed National service scheme as “crazy”. “Again, why are they starting to talk about that now?
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“We already have in the Army Foundation College up in Harrogate which serves 16-18 year olds who can go there, have a full education, get paid to be there and learn life skills and then at the end decide whether or not they want to join the army. There is already a system in place. This whole national service thing is just to try to get votes, it’s crazy.
“You can’t have a blanket approach but also there are kids in schools who would benefit from being in training between 16 and 18 if they are not academic but this isn’t the way. Our Army is getting smaller and smaller, they don’t put the money into it, they don’t look after the veterans after they leave service. They need to think about that first.”
Dame Kelly, who chose to come out at the age of 52 in an interview with the Sunday Mirror also spoke about Sunak’s record on trans rights. “It’s a difficult topic but my main thing I would say to him is: ‘stop vilifying people for your political gain’
“Just get on with the causes, stop targeting minority groups that you think are getting the headlines to help you win an election when actually there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have been suffering from some of the things that you have not been sorting out for so many years.
“You are literally ruining lives for your own political gain. It’s ridiculous. We used to be number one in the world for diversity and inclusion and we’re number 16 now. It’s wrong. Stop trying to hurt peoples’ lives by bringing up something that is irrelevant to what else is going on in this country at the moment with the cost of living crisis, pouring sewage into our waters, energy bills and everything else.”
Kelly Holmes: Unique – A Memoir, the updated paperback rrp £9.99 published by Mirror Books, is on sale now.