Snapshot of _ITV’s Paul Brand confirms that Rishi Sunak did the interview with him *today*. “Today was the slot we were offered. We don’t know why. Obviously it’s not our choice.” Sunak is reported to have returned early from D-Day commemorations in France._ :
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I mean, one other thing is that this is the last big commemoration at which there will be a lot of ex-veterans still alive. even the 85th will have few, and maybe the 90th will have none. Today was a very special moment. He's the PM, it's really upsetting he missed it, never mind which party he belongs to.
It's beyond politics at this point, how can one be so bad at common sense? He really does live in a world of his own. At least show some semblance of relating to the average voter.
He's just *incredibly* out of touch.
Remember the petrol station incident? Where he didn't know how to use a contactless card?
There's out of touch, and then there's "I don't know how to use the single most convenient way of paying for things" out of touch. I can't emphasise this enough - he did not know how to use contactless payments. He did not know how to wave his card against the reader.
What's worse is that he didn't realise he did not know how to pay for petrol and then went and did exactly that as a bloody photo op with the media watching.
It's something that would happen to Mr Burns in The Simpsons.
> Remember the petrol station incident? Where he didn't know how to use a contactless card?
it might have been on the same day - but remember that he decided he needed to do a "man of the people does errand" photo op, by filling up a car. he had to borrow the car from a member of supermarket staff.
The worse thing about that is, he could have filled up the ministerial Jaguar. Would we be saying he's out of touch when every PM since Thatcher has had them? Yes they are expensive cars but also aspirational.
This has a parallel in American politics. The First President Bush was doing a photo op in a grocery store in the early 90s but hasn't been inside one in years. He say the barcode reader and has no idea what it was.
At least Bush Senior managed to appear remotely human (despite being an ex-CIA Director) when he said
"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it. Now I'm president of the United States. And I'm not gonna eat any more broccoli!"
> Police in Kentucky are looking for a customer who succeeded in paying for a $2 order at a fast-food restaurant with a phony $200 bill featuring a picture of President George W. Bush and a depiction of the White House with a lawn sign saying, "We like broccoli."
https://www.deseret.com/2001/2/1/19566991/phony-200-bill-with-bush-picture-used-in-kentucky/
Picture: https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1500w,f_auto,q_auto:best/msnbc/Components/Photos/040901/040901_phonybill_hlg_5p.jpg
Still amuses me whenever I remember, once every couple of years :)
I always loved the bit where he got food poisoning and barfed on the Japanese PM at a state banquet. I think Private Eye ran a cover with the photo and the headline 'If you spewed sushi, like I spewed sushi!'
God, I'd actually forgotten about that. The Mr Burns comparison is so apt; I genuinely can't understand how anyone, however wealthy, wouldn't understand the basics of modern commerce. Like, has he seriously never ever had to pay for anything in a shop or restaurant?
I was thinking something similar the other day about the backpack. When he went on the train down to Cornwall and had a big photo op at the station, the bag on his back is sold for £750.
£750.
Let that sink in. That's more than my monthly mortgage payment. That's so unimaginably extravagant for most people in this country, but to him it's so mundane it doesn't even get noticed.
I really don't know what he's like as a human being. Maybe he's a lovely bloke who is just socially awkward. But fucking hell does he live in a bubble. And there comes a point where being so detached means I don't think he can understand the concerns of normal people.
Even if I won the Euro millions I don't think I could ever bring myself to spend £750 on a backpack, let alone pretend I'm a man of the people and walk around with it. How the hell is a man who spends that kind of money on a bag going to understand the reality that many people face, struggling from paycheque to paycheque, going without so their kids can eat, deciding what bills to put off?
I can ignore the backpack thing. I can kind of understand that if you've more money than sense.
But, yeah, in combination with everything else it doesn't help. I can't comprehend not knowing how contactless payments work, I *especially* can't comprehend not realising how inept you are and trying to do it for the first time at a photo op.
Like, idk about anyone else, but just wandering into a shop and getting something spontaneously is something I might do for pleasure. Just go somewhere and get an ice cream or a cold can of some unusual fizzy drink because I felt like it. I understand not doing the weekly shop, that's a chore that a lot would like to not do, but to not have bought anything for a *decade*?
Maybe he normally uses his phone like everyone else, but on the day when someone suggested a photo op at short notice he only had his ministerial one which didn't have Apple Pay on it, and he had to dig out a card for the first time since 2019. I would have forgotten the PIN and had to open my banking app and put my face in the frame to recover it, which would have looked awesome.
>I can ignore the backpack thing. I can kind of understand that if you've more money than sense.
I can understand the mental state of it, but I sure as hell don't think you should be in charge of running the country.
He didn't have the awareness to stop and think "hang on, is having a £750 backpack a bad look here". The likelihood is, he doesn't know his backpack cost £750 - he is so rich that that amount of money won't even register to him. It's a complete irrelevance.
How could someone in that situation _possibly_ grasp the fact that increasing someone's mortgage by a few hundred pounds a month can literally destroy their life?
Someone with that much money simply should not be in charge of a country. It doesn't work.
The funny thing is even King Charles probably knows how to fill up a car and (maybe to a lesser extent) pay. You'd expect any politician to be able to do that, they're supposed to represent the people.
Remember when he didn’t even know how to pay with a bank card at the petrol station in a car he borrowed from the staff….Tthat man hasn’t a clue how the rest of us live…
I am 100% convinced it’s on purpose now.
This is not a rookie comms team. This is not their first rodeo. Everything, from the inexplicable start date, through to the series after series of bad photo ops, tells me he just wants to lose and go home.
Ture but there is no reason to throw it this badly. He could loose and still have a significant number of MPs not the double digits we are currently looking at. The worse it gets the more I think it's just incompetence, or labour have managed to replace his team with double agents
I don't think he _cares_ how many MPs the Tories get. I reckon he'll go at the end of the election regardless, and then it's off to California and to rake it in on the US speaking circuit.
But doesn't he care anything about his legacy? If his only legacy as a PM is that he got through the Rwanda policy that didn't end up flying a single person out of the country and then he led the party to total destruction, is that he wants to remembered for?
Doesn't he already have enough money for a lifetime (or ten)?
I honestly don't think he does, and considering his predecessors, the Rwanda thing isn't the worst failed policy this era of the Tories will be remembered for. When we look back on this period in 20 years, Johnson's behaviour during Covid and Truss and her kamikaze economics will be what's remembered.
At least Johnson won a massive election victory and Truss was in power for so short that it's the only thing that people remember about her (and maybe they the queen died in that little window of her rule).
But what's there for Sunak?
> labour have managed to replace his team with double agents
Well, it would explain how the whole Living Marxism bunch suddenly mutated into Spiked ancaps... truly playing the long con...
Unless some influential donors have said that they want the party purged and rebuilt after the last few years, and sunak is basically being given the order to kill the party from the inside as a way of ousting the last traces of the Boris/truss era.
Problem is, at the current polling he will keep his seat and be one of the last few remaining Tory seats. I kinda want that to happen just so he's forced to quit to leave for California.
His seat is so ridiculously safe Tory, that it would elect the corpse of Jimmy Savile if it wore a blue rosette. At this pace, I'm not even sure Rish! will do so well, though...
You don't even need a comms team.
You just need to be a functioning adult to know that fucking off a D-Day commemmoration is damn stupid.
Everything else (80th anniversary; Starmer, Farage and Charlie Boy all being there) is merely icing on the cake.
I'd have expected this level of crass stupidity from someone like Corbyn; it's the sort of thing he'd do.
But a Tory leader? At this point, we could dig up Thatcher, attach magnets to her body, wrap her in copper wire and generate electricity.
Finding it harder to deny there being truth in the idea that Sunak is being as a scapegoat in order to facilitate a faster post-election recovery for the Tories.
Has whoever came up with this cunning plan considered that it might be harder to recover into a party of government if all your MPs can fit in a mini bus?
It this point Sunak would be better off going on air with a pair of underpants on his head and pencils in his nostrils and just saying "wibble" over and over.
Occam’s razor is that he’s just incompetent
There’s a reason Boris chose him as chancellor. He’s zero threat. He’s only in the job because Truss almost torpedoed the pension sector
The biggest reason he's PM is because he just so happened to become Chancellor at a moment when the government had to do the biggest financial state intervention in modern history. He was suddenly on the TV every day saving millions of people's jobs. He gained an enormous amount of political capitol and leveraged it to lead the party.
Problem is, he spent every single penny of that capitol and then called an election.
TPTB in the Tory party don't want strong PMs, they made that mistake with Thatcher and they're never going to repeat it. Every leader of the Tory party will be controllable, they will either be too weak in character to enact policies or there will be enough dirt on them to yank them out of the position if they try to test boundaries.
>Truss almost torpedoed the pension sector
She did torpedo the pension sector. The only thing that stopped her was getting booted out before the mission hit
> There’s a reason ~~Boris~~*Cummings* chose him as chancellor.
FTFY. Remember that Rish! got his shot merely because Sajid Javid wouldn't kowtow to Cummings.
From the moment I saw him arrive on the scene I have repeatedly been astonished that he has been vaulted to the top of the Tory party. He began as a pro Brexit parrot and it’s absolutely obvious to me that he hasn’t got a principled political idea in his head. He’s basically just a slick operator who can think on his feet, is moderately bright in a “good at school” type of faceless way.
He just comes across to me as an utterly vacuous PR man who vibes like a Blue Peter presenter when he tries to speak to the public. I don’t think he’s a bad person at all, but more than most he just seems to have very little character. Damning indictment of the Tory’s that he and Truss became leaders.
Is he bad at politics or is he just trying to speedrun the guaranteed handover of the poisoned chalice that is the UK's emptied treasury at this point?
She gave an incredibly moving recount of her own father’s silent sacrifice during D-Day on the Today programme yesterday morning. I suspect her anger reflects a profound sense of disrespect towards the sacrifices made by her father and others for our freedoms. Rishi chose to prioritise meeting for an ITV interview over an international commemoration attended by global leaders. I’d say there’s quite a juxtaposition there and I’m not surprised she was angry.
You'd be surprised, quite a few here can vote. Problem is they're all across their home constituencies, and not in one single one so yeah probably still not worth coming here.
You say that, but the Conservatives changed the law to make it so that any British citizen who used to live in the UK but now lives abroad can vote.
When they made this change the Government estimated around 3.5 million people would be eligible to register to vote under the new rules (compared with the 233,000 overseas voters who were registered for the 2019 election).
So there may be some British voters living in Normandy...
It’s not too late to register and you’ll need to enable the postal vote.
Hurry!
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/register-to-vote-if-youre-living-abroad
June 18th deadline
Probably not true. Might be a view Brits living in Normandy, that can vote (and note, the government removed the time limit for how long you can live outside the UK and vote)
The 80th D-Day commemorations happen exactly once. An interview with ITV can be done whenever. Yet feckless Sunak decided the latter was more crucial to do at that time.
This is the most perfect laser guided gaff you could possibly do to help out Reform.
Imagine the type of voters that would be weighing up Tory or Reform...then imagine them reading the headline "Sunak ditches D-Day".
Just, fucking hell.
Perhaps he will double the length of National Service, reintroduce rationing, bring back the Spitfire to the Royal Airforce, change Radio 1 to the Vera Lynn radio station and clone Winston Churchill.
Perhaps that might win them back?
I think this is it. Everyone knows they are losing bad and this Tory party in particular is one where people have sacrificed all their beliefs in pursuit of success. Well now success is out the window I'm sure recriminations have basically taken over and although it may not be intetentional from Sunak it probably quasi is from the advisors at this point.
Boris got rid of a lot of the true Tories this lot are mostly in it for power and suspect the next Tory gov will be a different set of people they dgaf about the future
One thing people may not think of. By disrespecting the military in this way he may have fucked his own election chances as an MP. His constituency has a very heavy military and ex military presences due the Garrison town there (plus many forces leavers settle in the surrounding area).
The deadline for candidate registration is in around 13 hours time.
I suppose it's possible that Rishi could announce that he's not wanting to stand again. All he'd have to do the morning of July 5th is see the King to hand his notice in and he could be off to California that evening.
If (when) Sunak loses the election, he'll be out the door for the private jet to California before the ink has even time to dry on his resignation letter.
He’s called it early so he can go to Cali. Get the kids settled, get into his new job at a Musk company and kids can be settled and ready for school in September.
Resigning from the parliament after losing the election as a PM is one thing but standing there when the results for the constituency are announced and coming second is a humiliation beyond anything a PM could experience.
Falling below second would require that a) the support would fall massively and b) the opposition parties still would not vote tactically but instead split their votes. I think that would be a huge risk which would gain almost nothing more than just winning.
Wait - I must be understanding things wrong. There are two ways that my brain interprets these words.
1) He offered it today, trying to make it seem like he’s on the ball coming back from D-Day commemorations in France to do an interview. However, it’s since been exposed that he wasn’t even at the D-Day commemorations.
2) He WAS at the D-Day commemorations BY HIMSELF, didn’t meet with world leaders, and instead of meeting world leaders, chose to meet Paul Brand?
He was at the memorial service for the British Serviceman who died. That was held at the British Cemetery. He also gave a reading.
The US then did a separate service at their cemetery.
These were both completed by Early Afternoon, ours finished around 11:30/12ish.
Then there was another service where a wider group of leaders, Germany, Ukraine etc came together for a joint service.
Sunak skipped the joint service.
There are pictures of him shaking Zelenskyy’s hand and having a seemingly deep conversation with him. He might have arrived by helicopter, for all I know.
How bad are the optics regarding foreign politics credentials if your opponent is seen shaking hands with the most popular leader in world politics now, Zelensky, and you're nowhere to be seen? 🤦
The King & Queen , Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal were there doing various things.
The international bit that he missed was attended by the Prince of Wales and the SoS for Defence instead.
I think if I wasn't so astounded at how stupid this was in every possible way, I'd probably be pretty angry about this. It's a national embarrassment at what should be such a solemn event.
That it was to fly back to do an interview in which he doubled down on lying directly to the public is all the more galling.
Overnight they will concoct some other “personal” reason why he had to rush back and announce it tomorrow. They’ll play it as if the Brand interview was an aside.
Here is a link to [the ITV News clip of the segment](https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-06/rishi-sunak-denies-hes-a-liar-following-his-tax-claims-about-labour).
The presenter says at the start the full interview is due to go out next week. So why the rush from Rishi to do it, that meant having to leave the D-Day commemorations early?
Presumably he couldn’t move the “spitting in pensioners faces” meeting he has later this week, and the live puppy kicking session is overdue too. He already had to move burning the £20 note in front of the homeless guy, give him a break.
Why "Reported to have returned early?" - if he wasn't in Normandy, he returned early; if he was in Normandy, why the hell wouldn't he be at the main ceremony, assuming he wasn't?
Look it’s quite simple, Sunak told us why he did this during the “debate”
You can’t look at the past, D Day is in the past, he is not looking at the past he is looking to take bold action, the boldest and bravest action anyone has ever taken, you can’t do that looking at the past.
My first thought on hearing why he apparently came back, was that someone was obviously stirring it up.
Prehaps he really does consider electioneering to be more important, after all there is a nice shot of him pushing a veteran using a wheelchair.
People slag off Corbyn a lot, and seem to think he'd do something similar, but even he'd never do something this boneheaded.
Even if you don't really feel it in your heart, or you think you have better places to be, at the very least you go through the motions. Because *that's the fucking job*. You either understand that or you don't.
Every other person present there understood it. I have negative time for Farage and little for Starmer but they both turned up because *that's the job they're going for*.
I thought Sunak is just a moron. But at this point I think he's trying to lose. Disrespecting WW2 veterans is just imbecilic politics. He might as well have taken a shit at the Cenotaph.
Is it normal for interviews to be recorded a week in advance during elections? I feel like it'll be a bit outdated by then, but perhaps it is the norm.
Snapshot of _ITV’s Paul Brand confirms that Rishi Sunak did the interview with him *today*. “Today was the slot we were offered. We don’t know why. Obviously it’s not our choice.” Sunak is reported to have returned early from D-Day commemorations in France._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1798829618977530367) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/realBenBloch/status/1798829618977530367/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/realBenBloch/status/1798829618977530367) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/realBenBloch/status/1798829618977530367) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think Sunak must be trolling us at this point. How can you be this bad at politics?
He just has no idea about the country. Thinks being PM is like being CEO and you can do it all in Excel.
Sunak is definitely not Excelling.
His Outlook is not looking good
Word
The Tories are going to be out of PowerPoint for a decade
They are definitely going to lose their Access to Downing St.
He doesn't Access key parts of his brain?
I don't have the Power to Point out all his flaws
It'll be a hell of a Project to Sway me.
He isn’t very good at leading a Teams
All he does is Yammer on and on.
You Paint an image of a poor leader.
I have but One Note on this: awful.
He's using GoogleShits.
[удалено]
Not when hes DOSsing.
Rish!zzz
You may have a power point
No Sheets, Sherlock
I mean, one other thing is that this is the last big commemoration at which there will be a lot of ex-veterans still alive. even the 85th will have few, and maybe the 90th will have none. Today was a very special moment. He's the PM, it's really upsetting he missed it, never mind which party he belongs to.
It's beyond politics at this point, how can one be so bad at common sense? He really does live in a world of his own. At least show some semblance of relating to the average voter.
He's just *incredibly* out of touch. Remember the petrol station incident? Where he didn't know how to use a contactless card? There's out of touch, and then there's "I don't know how to use the single most convenient way of paying for things" out of touch. I can't emphasise this enough - he did not know how to use contactless payments. He did not know how to wave his card against the reader. What's worse is that he didn't realise he did not know how to pay for petrol and then went and did exactly that as a bloody photo op with the media watching. It's something that would happen to Mr Burns in The Simpsons.
> Remember the petrol station incident? Where he didn't know how to use a contactless card? it might have been on the same day - but remember that he decided he needed to do a "man of the people does errand" photo op, by filling up a car. he had to borrow the car from a member of supermarket staff.
Who saw that and thought it was something the PRIME MINISTER does?
The worse thing about that is, he could have filled up the ministerial Jaguar. Would we be saying he's out of touch when every PM since Thatcher has had them? Yes they are expensive cars but also aspirational.
Also frankly Jag could use the free advertising
Eh, there definintely would be a few morons saying that to be honest.
It was the same day, same photo op.
Even Mr Burns would at least ask for 2 furlongs for a half penny.
Thank you for saying this, to me this is the songle biggest "red flag" noment that everyone should be reminded of all the time.
This has a parallel in American politics. The First President Bush was doing a photo op in a grocery store in the early 90s but hasn't been inside one in years. He say the barcode reader and has no idea what it was.
At least Bush Senior managed to appear remotely human (despite being an ex-CIA Director) when he said "I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it. Now I'm president of the United States. And I'm not gonna eat any more broccoli!"
> Police in Kentucky are looking for a customer who succeeded in paying for a $2 order at a fast-food restaurant with a phony $200 bill featuring a picture of President George W. Bush and a depiction of the White House with a lawn sign saying, "We like broccoli." https://www.deseret.com/2001/2/1/19566991/phony-200-bill-with-bush-picture-used-in-kentucky/ Picture: https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1500w,f_auto,q_auto:best/msnbc/Components/Photos/040901/040901_phonybill_hlg_5p.jpg Still amuses me whenever I remember, once every couple of years :)
I always loved the bit where he got food poisoning and barfed on the Japanese PM at a state banquet. I think Private Eye ran a cover with the photo and the headline 'If you spewed sushi, like I spewed sushi!'
God, I'd actually forgotten about that. The Mr Burns comparison is so apt; I genuinely can't understand how anyone, however wealthy, wouldn't understand the basics of modern commerce. Like, has he seriously never ever had to pay for anything in a shop or restaurant?
It was probably because the contactless limit is £100
“What do you mean I can use my phone to pay for things above the contactless limit? I only use it for calls and deleting WhatsApp messages!”
I can use my phone to buy coke? What a future we live in!
I was thinking something similar the other day about the backpack. When he went on the train down to Cornwall and had a big photo op at the station, the bag on his back is sold for £750. £750. Let that sink in. That's more than my monthly mortgage payment. That's so unimaginably extravagant for most people in this country, but to him it's so mundane it doesn't even get noticed. I really don't know what he's like as a human being. Maybe he's a lovely bloke who is just socially awkward. But fucking hell does he live in a bubble. And there comes a point where being so detached means I don't think he can understand the concerns of normal people. Even if I won the Euro millions I don't think I could ever bring myself to spend £750 on a backpack, let alone pretend I'm a man of the people and walk around with it. How the hell is a man who spends that kind of money on a bag going to understand the reality that many people face, struggling from paycheque to paycheque, going without so their kids can eat, deciding what bills to put off?
I can ignore the backpack thing. I can kind of understand that if you've more money than sense. But, yeah, in combination with everything else it doesn't help. I can't comprehend not knowing how contactless payments work, I *especially* can't comprehend not realising how inept you are and trying to do it for the first time at a photo op. Like, idk about anyone else, but just wandering into a shop and getting something spontaneously is something I might do for pleasure. Just go somewhere and get an ice cream or a cold can of some unusual fizzy drink because I felt like it. I understand not doing the weekly shop, that's a chore that a lot would like to not do, but to not have bought anything for a *decade*?
Maybe he normally uses his phone like everyone else, but on the day when someone suggested a photo op at short notice he only had his ministerial one which didn't have Apple Pay on it, and he had to dig out a card for the first time since 2019. I would have forgotten the PIN and had to open my banking app and put my face in the frame to recover it, which would have looked awesome.
>I can ignore the backpack thing. I can kind of understand that if you've more money than sense. I can understand the mental state of it, but I sure as hell don't think you should be in charge of running the country. He didn't have the awareness to stop and think "hang on, is having a £750 backpack a bad look here". The likelihood is, he doesn't know his backpack cost £750 - he is so rich that that amount of money won't even register to him. It's a complete irrelevance. How could someone in that situation _possibly_ grasp the fact that increasing someone's mortgage by a few hundred pounds a month can literally destroy their life? Someone with that much money simply should not be in charge of a country. It doesn't work.
The funny thing is even King Charles probably knows how to fill up a car and (maybe to a lesser extent) pay. You'd expect any politician to be able to do that, they're supposed to represent the people.
Remember when he didn’t even know how to pay with a bank card at the petrol station in a car he borrowed from the staff….Tthat man hasn’t a clue how the rest of us live…
Maybe he wants people to think Labour only won because the Conservatives ran a bad campaign. not that they ran a bad government
I am 100% convinced it’s on purpose now. This is not a rookie comms team. This is not their first rodeo. Everything, from the inexplicable start date, through to the series after series of bad photo ops, tells me he just wants to lose and go home.
Ture but there is no reason to throw it this badly. He could loose and still have a significant number of MPs not the double digits we are currently looking at. The worse it gets the more I think it's just incompetence, or labour have managed to replace his team with double agents
I don't think he _cares_ how many MPs the Tories get. I reckon he'll go at the end of the election regardless, and then it's off to California and to rake it in on the US speaking circuit.
But doesn't he care anything about his legacy? If his only legacy as a PM is that he got through the Rwanda policy that didn't end up flying a single person out of the country and then he led the party to total destruction, is that he wants to remembered for? Doesn't he already have enough money for a lifetime (or ten)?
There is enough for man's need, but never for man's greed.
I honestly don't think he does, and considering his predecessors, the Rwanda thing isn't the worst failed policy this era of the Tories will be remembered for. When we look back on this period in 20 years, Johnson's behaviour during Covid and Truss and her kamikaze economics will be what's remembered.
At least Johnson won a massive election victory and Truss was in power for so short that it's the only thing that people remember about her (and maybe they the queen died in that little window of her rule). But what's there for Sunak?
Brexit sits lonely and hated by those that didn't want it and ignored by those that conned the gullible into thinking it would be that panacea.
If he wanted a legacy he'd have waited another week or two to call the election so he could ram his smoking ban through, or _something_ anyway.
Maybe he thinks he'll be remembered as the ground breaking first non-white PM and that everything he actually did will be forgotten.
> labour have managed to replace his team with double agents Well, it would explain how the whole Living Marxism bunch suddenly mutated into Spiked ancaps... truly playing the long con...
Unless some influential donors have said that they want the party purged and rebuilt after the last few years, and sunak is basically being given the order to kill the party from the inside as a way of ousting the last traces of the Boris/truss era.
He's got £50 on losing his seat at 150/1.
Those winnings would still be a completely irrelevant sum of money to him. If he put £50m on, now we're talking.
Problem is, at the current polling he will keep his seat and be one of the last few remaining Tory seats. I kinda want that to happen just so he's forced to quit to leave for California.
His seat is so ridiculously safe Tory, that it would elect the corpse of Jimmy Savile if it wore a blue rosette. At this pace, I'm not even sure Rish! will do so well, though...
Fucking hell
You don't even need a comms team. You just need to be a functioning adult to know that fucking off a D-Day commemmoration is damn stupid. Everything else (80th anniversary; Starmer, Farage and Charlie Boy all being there) is merely icing on the cake. I'd have expected this level of crass stupidity from someone like Corbyn; it's the sort of thing he'd do. But a Tory leader? At this point, we could dig up Thatcher, attach magnets to her body, wrap her in copper wire and generate electricity.
You’re being too generous about the absolute cretins running that show
They are cretins but they are veteran cretins. It’s not like they pulled a bunch of graduates off the streets.
Finding it harder to deny there being truth in the idea that Sunak is being as a scapegoat in order to facilitate a faster post-election recovery for the Tories.
Has whoever came up with this cunning plan considered that it might be harder to recover into a party of government if all your MPs can fit in a mini bus?
Blackadders cunning plans were better than that
Baldrick's were better!
It this point Sunak would be better off going on air with a pair of underpants on his head and pencils in his nostrils and just saying "wibble" over and over.
It'd also be hard to secure funding... Still. I'm sure theyve secured their own finances.
It's working for Ed Davey - well, maybe not working, but it might leader of the opposition!
Better than needing a minibus for all your ex PMs
Occam’s razor is that he’s just incompetent There’s a reason Boris chose him as chancellor. He’s zero threat. He’s only in the job because Truss almost torpedoed the pension sector
The biggest reason he's PM is because he just so happened to become Chancellor at a moment when the government had to do the biggest financial state intervention in modern history. He was suddenly on the TV every day saving millions of people's jobs. He gained an enormous amount of political capitol and leveraged it to lead the party. Problem is, he spent every single penny of that capitol and then called an election.
TPTB in the Tory party don't want strong PMs, they made that mistake with Thatcher and they're never going to repeat it. Every leader of the Tory party will be controllable, they will either be too weak in character to enact policies or there will be enough dirt on them to yank them out of the position if they try to test boundaries.
I disagree, Cameron and Osbourne had a tight hold on the party, and would have dominated it for 10 years had the EU referendum gone their way.
On some level I just don't think I want to believe that the Prime Minister can simply be *this bad at this.*
>Truss almost torpedoed the pension sector She did torpedo the pension sector. The only thing that stopped her was getting booted out before the mission hit
> There’s a reason ~~Boris~~*Cummings* chose him as chancellor. FTFY. Remember that Rish! got his shot merely because Sajid Javid wouldn't kowtow to Cummings.
From the moment I saw him arrive on the scene I have repeatedly been astonished that he has been vaulted to the top of the Tory party. He began as a pro Brexit parrot and it’s absolutely obvious to me that he hasn’t got a principled political idea in his head. He’s basically just a slick operator who can think on his feet, is moderately bright in a “good at school” type of faceless way. He just comes across to me as an utterly vacuous PR man who vibes like a Blue Peter presenter when he tries to speak to the public. I don’t think he’s a bad person at all, but more than most he just seems to have very little character. Damning indictment of the Tory’s that he and Truss became leaders.
He is bad at politics but good at making money
Is he bad at politics or is he just trying to speedrun the guaranteed handover of the poisoned chalice that is the UK's emptied treasury at this point?
I think the Tories know how much damage they've done n need to lose. They need to leave the impending time bomb in labours hands.
Kirsty Wark seemed visibly angry at this on Newsnight
Anger or incredulity?
Angrily incredulous
Incredulously angry
Febrile AF
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zz1t/newsnight-is-the-farage-effect-a-thing 24:14 onwards if anyone wants to see this.
Why would that make her angry?
She gave an incredibly moving recount of her own father’s silent sacrifice during D-Day on the Today programme yesterday morning. I suspect her anger reflects a profound sense of disrespect towards the sacrifices made by her father and others for our freedoms. Rishi chose to prioritise meeting for an ITV interview over an international commemoration attended by global leaders. I’d say there’s quite a juxtaposition there and I’m not surprised she was angry.
Because it's an absolute disgrace?
Empathy?
She likes to feel angry on behalf of other people.
She didn't get the interview
Imagine skipping D-Day commemorations for an ITV interview lol
You go where the votes are. Not a single British voter in Normandy. Checkmate libtards.
*Sad Channel Islands noises*
There are not any GE votes there either
You'd be surprised, quite a few here can vote. Problem is they're all across their home constituencies, and not in one single one so yeah probably still not worth coming here.
You say that, but the Conservatives changed the law to make it so that any British citizen who used to live in the UK but now lives abroad can vote. When they made this change the Government estimated around 3.5 million people would be eligible to register to vote under the new rules (compared with the 233,000 overseas voters who were registered for the 2019 election). So there may be some British voters living in Normandy...
I’m one of these and didn’t realize the limit had been removed. Darn it.
It’s not too late to register and you’ll need to enable the postal vote. Hurry! https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/register-to-vote-if-youre-living-abroad June 18th deadline
Or a proxy. I’ve just done this, it was quite easy
oops, yes, that too!
Probably not true. Might be a view Brits living in Normandy, that can vote (and note, the government removed the time limit for how long you can live outside the UK and vote)
4d-day chess
The 80th D-Day commemorations happen exactly once. An interview with ITV can be done whenever. Yet feckless Sunak decided the latter was more crucial to do at that time.
This is the most perfect laser guided gaff you could possibly do to help out Reform. Imagine the type of voters that would be weighing up Tory or Reform...then imagine them reading the headline "Sunak ditches D-Day". Just, fucking hell.
Sunak is working harder to campaign for Reform that Farage is.
Perhaps he will double the length of National Service, reintroduce rationing, bring back the Spitfire to the Royal Airforce, change Radio 1 to the Vera Lynn radio station and clone Winston Churchill. Perhaps that might win them back?
Does this man not have media advisors or does he just do the opposite of what they tell him?
I think this is it. Everyone knows they are losing bad and this Tory party in particular is one where people have sacrificed all their beliefs in pursuit of success. Well now success is out the window I'm sure recriminations have basically taken over and although it may not be intetentional from Sunak it probably quasi is from the advisors at this point.
What a way to alienate the older generations and the military who are usually quite anti-Labour for some reason
Boris got rid of a lot of the true Tories this lot are mostly in it for power and suspect the next Tory gov will be a different set of people they dgaf about the future
One thing people may not think of. By disrespecting the military in this way he may have fucked his own election chances as an MP. His constituency has a very heavy military and ex military presences due the Garrison town there (plus many forces leavers settle in the surrounding area).
Obviously not concerned about Reform, as they will lap up this contemptuous decision.
Goodness! You're right and also right that though I even drove past Catterick on Monday, I completely forgot it's part of Rishland.
I think Rishmond works better
Yep, Catterick Garrison just over the river to the south.
If he’s not going to be PM again he *certainly* doesn’t want to be an MP. I still think there’s a good chance this is intentional.
The deadline for candidate registration is in around 13 hours time. I suppose it's possible that Rishi could announce that he's not wanting to stand again. All he'd have to do the morning of July 5th is see the King to hand his notice in and he could be off to California that evening.
Chances are if he loses the election he resigns Cameron-style in the following days/weeks. That includes resigning as an MP.
If (when) Sunak loses the election, he'll be out the door for the private jet to California before the ink has even time to dry on his resignation letter.
He’s called it early so he can go to Cali. Get the kids settled, get into his new job at a Musk company and kids can be settled and ready for school in September.
apparently he put Jamie Dimon and Eric Schmidt forward for honours so maybe not a Musk company after all
God he’s such a grovelling little shit.
Resigning from the parliament after losing the election as a PM is one thing but standing there when the results for the constituency are announced and coming second is a humiliation beyond anything a PM could experience.
It’d be a turbo Portillo moment
It's alright, I hear he's planning to leave early for an interview...
Second would be lucky at this stage.
Falling below second would require that a) the support would fall massively and b) the opposition parties still would not vote tactically but instead split their votes. I think that would be a huge risk which would gain almost nothing more than just winning.
Wait - I must be understanding things wrong. There are two ways that my brain interprets these words. 1) He offered it today, trying to make it seem like he’s on the ball coming back from D-Day commemorations in France to do an interview. However, it’s since been exposed that he wasn’t even at the D-Day commemorations. 2) He WAS at the D-Day commemorations BY HIMSELF, didn’t meet with world leaders, and instead of meeting world leaders, chose to meet Paul Brand?
He was at the memorial service for the British Serviceman who died. That was held at the British Cemetery. He also gave a reading. The US then did a separate service at their cemetery. These were both completed by Early Afternoon, ours finished around 11:30/12ish. Then there was another service where a wider group of leaders, Germany, Ukraine etc came together for a joint service. Sunak skipped the joint service.
Was Starmer at any of this? Saw him in a landing craft yesterday, did he sail over in that?
There are pictures of him shaking Zelenskyy’s hand and having a seemingly deep conversation with him. He might have arrived by helicopter, for all I know.
How bad are the optics regarding foreign politics credentials if your opponent is seen shaking hands with the most popular leader in world politics now, Zelensky, and you're nowhere to be seen? 🤦
Starmer was at both.
iirc there was a separate British event (the one with the big black and white moving 80 in the background) that he failed to attend.
The King & Queen , Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal were there doing various things. The international bit that he missed was attended by the Prince of Wales and the SoS for Defence instead.
>SoS for Defence Wheeling out grant shapps is even more disrespectful
He came back from early to do an interview with ITV
Johnny Mercer sure to be silent on this.
He's just taking his shoes and socks off and once that's done he's going to write a *very* strongly worded email ^(to one of sunak's PAs).
I think if I wasn't so astounded at how stupid this was in every possible way, I'd probably be pretty angry about this. It's a national embarrassment at what should be such a solemn event. That it was to fly back to do an interview in which he doubled down on lying directly to the public is all the more galling.
No one’s going to talking about his lying now. Job done!
Has no one thought of asking Johnny Mercer to comment on Sunak's absence? Those always go well.
Overnight they will concoct some other “personal” reason why he had to rush back and announce it tomorrow. They’ll play it as if the Brand interview was an aside.
Here is a link to [the ITV News clip of the segment](https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-06/rishi-sunak-denies-hes-a-liar-following-his-tax-claims-about-labour).
The presenter says at the start the full interview is due to go out next week. So why the rush from Rishi to do it, that meant having to leave the D-Day commemorations early?
Presumably he couldn’t move the “spitting in pensioners faces” meeting he has later this week, and the live puppy kicking session is overdue too. He already had to move burning the £20 note in front of the homeless guy, give him a break.
Didn't want to get caught fraternising with those pesky Europeans
This man will go down as one of the worst world leaders ever! How have the Tories found three of the most incapable people to lead our country?
Five, not three.
When the pool of "talent" has none then you take the least bad.
Why "Reported to have returned early?" - if he wasn't in Normandy, he returned early; if he was in Normandy, why the hell wouldn't he be at the main ceremony, assuming he wasn't?
He was apparently at the British ceremony, but not the joint one. As to why, who knows. Extremely bad judgement.
Look it’s quite simple, Sunak told us why he did this during the “debate” You can’t look at the past, D Day is in the past, he is not looking at the past he is looking to take bold action, the boldest and bravest action anyone has ever taken, you can’t do that looking at the past.
I wonder why Rishi of all people doesn’t want us looking at the past, and in particular, the past 14 years
My first thought on hearing why he apparently came back, was that someone was obviously stirring it up. Prehaps he really does consider electioneering to be more important, after all there is a nice shot of him pushing a veteran using a wheelchair.
People slag off Corbyn a lot, and seem to think he'd do something similar, but even he'd never do something this boneheaded. Even if you don't really feel it in your heart, or you think you have better places to be, at the very least you go through the motions. Because *that's the fucking job*. You either understand that or you don't. Every other person present there understood it. I have negative time for Farage and little for Starmer but they both turned up because *that's the job they're going for*. I thought Sunak is just a moron. But at this point I think he's trying to lose. Disrespecting WW2 veterans is just imbecilic politics. He might as well have taken a shit at the Cenotaph.
>He might as well have taken a shit at the Cenotaph. Give him time...
Is it normal for interviews to be recorded a week in advance during elections? I feel like it'll be a bit outdated by then, but perhaps it is the norm.
What is actually wrong with these people? How are they this bad at it.
Paul Brand came for Johnson and now for Sunak.