Rishi Sunak says it was a ‘mistake’ to leave the 80th anniversary commemorations for D-Day early. That’s one way to describe ditching a memorial to the liberation of Western Europe to record an election interview for the telly. We have heard the various reasons as to why this was such an error. It was dreadful judgement. Terrible optics. Anathema to the very Silent Generation and Baby Boomer voters his election campaign is tailored to.
But while I have no designs on defending him, I suspect this is just who Sunak is. As one highly astute commentator, who isn’t above saying ‘I told you so’, once observed: ‘He combines the perception he is out of touch with the fact of actually being out of touch.’ It would not have occurred to him to stay and talk to the few surviving British veterans of D-Day, to grin for endless photographs as he listened to the same accounts over and over again. That would have required a quality Sunak lacks, and it’s not judgement as his other critics keep saying. It’s empathy. Empathy for the old boys, of course, but empathy also for the public and the reverence with which it regards these men. Empathy for a common, unspoken instinct about how the British prime minister should conduct himself on a D-Day anniversary.
Sunak computed events very differently. He had a problem: his £2,000 tax claim was coming unstuck. There was a solution: going on ITV News to defend his assertion. But there was an obstacle: the Normandy events. So he opted for a workaround: leaving early. I have no doubt that in Sunak’s mind he executed the only logical course of action. Given his chilly, unfeeling apology, I get the impression he still doesn’t understand why he is being lambasted.
Recall the reports, which he denies, that as chancellor he suggested England secede from the UK because the Union ‘doesn’t make financial sense to him’. The most woad-caked, saltire-hugging, Braveheart-quoting Scottish nationalist, even as he agitates to break up Britain, understands the emotional investment Tories and Unionists have in its history, shared destiny and constitutional character. A Conservative chancellor, now prime minister, saw only a balance sheet with assets and losses. As our astute commentator also noted: ‘It’s like the Economist set up a chatbot that accidentally got elected Prime Minister.‘
Sunak has no real feeling for D-Day, no feeling for the British people, no feeling for Britain. I wrote the previous sentence with great reluctance because I know some will hear it as a dog-whistle against the first British Asian prime minister. All I can say is that there is no coded meaning here and certainly no racist intent. It is Sunak’s flaws as a politician, not his heritage, that make him stand apart from the nation he leads.
Sunak is not an evil man. He comes across as a loving husband and a devoted father. He is easier to pity than to hate. He is just singularly unsuited to the office he holds and plainly unable to fake his way through. In that he fails to meet even the low bar cleared by the leader of the opposition. The D-Day commemorations were Sir Keir Starmer’s first official engagement as Prime Minister. He stayed, he listened, he showed respect. He represented our country in a way our prime minister could not.
The Labour leader will not be long in Downing Street before his own faults become undeniable even to his army of columnist fan boys. To mistake him for a person of character or courage or moral leadership requires a lobotomy for the period 2015 to 2019 inclusive. He is a man of no discernible quality save an instinct for personal survival and that public sector speciality of managing mediocrity. But after 19 months of Rishi Sunak, mediocrity looks prime ministerial.
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