“At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.” That’s an excerpt from For The Fallen by Laurence Binyon and, I would say, some of the most moving and vivid words ever written. 80 years since D-Day and yesterday we honoured the real heroes, without whom our lives would be very different today, if we had ever been born at all. The bravest of the brave, the very best of us. We honour their memory, we always will. Most of us, anyway.
Not so our pint-sized loser of a prime minister Rishi Sunak, who slipped away early from the proceedings in Normandy in order to record a TV interview in London as part of the Conservative party’s efforts to secure re-election on 4th July. Not only that, his officials made it clear to the organisers right from the start that he had what must have been a more pressing engagement for him and would be bunking off before the end. “Sorry, I’ve been found out,” was the gist of his response when pressed on the matter, not adding, “But the main thing on my mind is staying on as prime minister.”
You’ll have to take my word for it when I say that I am not turning this into a party political issue. In any event, that’s already happened because of Sunak’s actions. I’d have called any other politician out if they had done the same. It was brainless, it was crass, it was insensitive; it showed Sunak in his true light, an ambitious out-of-touch here today gone tomorrow second rate politician. Of all the political leaders in all the world, by the end the only two absent ones were Sunak and Vladimir Putin.
Can you imagine what the right-wing gutter press would have said if it had been the Labour leader who slipped away early to do some politics? Quite rightly, they’d have sensed blood and ripped into him. They need to do the same with Sunak for what should be a fatal error which should end his wretched career.
Sunak was asked yesterday whether he would lie to stay in power and he replied, “No.” Well, that’s a lie in itself because he’s done nothing but lie since he entered Number 10. It’s not second nature to him, it’s first nature. But this sordid event is worse than lying. He deliberately chose to leave the commemorations because he values his own position as prime minister more than honouring those who fought for our country and set Europe free. Some things, it’s impossible to forgive. And this is one of them.
We won’t remember Rishi Sunak.
