Is It Too Late For Sunak To Fall On His Sword? - Mathew Parris In The Times Today

8th June 2024

PM's D-Day blunder will leave many candidates wondering if a different leader might yet save them from defeat.

This weekly column could be regarded as among Rishi Sunak's last safe havens. I have said I will vote Conservative — in company, perhaps, with that last bastion of Tory support, people aged 98-plus who might remember serving in the Second World War. But I, like them, am shaken this weekend. The prime minister has blown it.

Even I — no fan of our national obsession with memorial events — can see that Sunak has a big problem. Personally, I can't stand pomp, circumstance and ceremonial. Cenotaphs, poppies, bowler hats, war memorials, flypasts, books with swastikas on the cover and the whole industry of looking backwards towards the last two world wars leave me cold.

But Sunak is prime minister. These things are his job. I know — and he should — how much they matter to millions. Every fibre of his intellect should have warned him that staying in Normandy for that D-Day international event was essential. He should have understood how wounded, how affronted, people would feel at any sign this stuff didn’t matter to the person at the top. And he might have recalled that it was only days since he proposed conscripting young people into national service.

Mathw Parris in the Times - full article Free this weekend