British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a fresh setback in his struggling election campaign on Friday when he apologized for leaving D-Day commemorations early in order to give an interview attacking the main opposition party.

Sunak’s decision to leave early was met with dismay within his Conservative Party, which is trailing far behind the Labour Party in opinion polls and facing the prospect of a huge defeat on July 4.

Labour Leader Keir Starmer also attended the D-Day 80th anniversary events in northern France on Thursday and was seen talking to world leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“After the conclusion of the British event in Normandy, I returned back to the U.K.,” Sunak said in a post on X. “On reflection, it was a mistake not to stay in France longer — and I apologize.”

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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    14 days ago

    TLDR: A dick makes a dick move.

    He’s going to get more bad press from this than that interview was worth. Good.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    14 days ago

    It absolutely doesn’t surprise me, but it is kinda funny to see him shoot himself in the foot like that. This was easy to not fuck up, but he managed to fuck it up.

    • girlfreddyOP
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      14 days ago

      Tbh you see similar stupidity coming from a variety of right-wing leaders all over the world. It’s like they just can’t keep their foot out of their mouth, so try and shove a whole leg in for good measure.

  • wjrii@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    The sense I get is that Sunak is just fucking over it and wants to be put out of his misery.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    13 days ago

    Boris was a really really shitty PM who seemed to just care about himself.

    But I can’t help but feel like Sunak is the prime minster who has cared the least about the UK ever.

    Seems like Boris at least wanted the UK to look good so he looks too. I feel like as long as Sunak was rich and safe he wouldn’t care if the UK was on fire and everyone in dead.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    13 days ago

    Rishi, buddy, if you don’t want to be PM anymore, you can just resign. We’re sure you have a foreign beach picked out already.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    14 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a fresh setback in his struggling election campaign on Friday when he apologized for leaving D-Day commemorations early in order to give an interview attacking the main opposition party.

    Sunak spoke at a British-led event but delegated other duties to ministers including Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who was pictured with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a memorial ceremony.

    Senior Labour spokesperson Jonathan Ashworth accused Sunak of “choosing to prioritize his own vanity TV appearances over our veterans,” and “it is yet more desperation, yet more chaos, and yet more dreadful judgment.”

    Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey accused the prime minister of a “total dereliction of duty.”

    Sunak has tried to portray himself as the person best placed to look after Britain’s security and he recently pledged to introduce mandatory national service if he wins the election.

    In the interview with ITV on Thursday, Sunak doubled down on claims this week that if Labour win power they would raise taxes by 2,000 pounds ($3,500 Cdn) per household.


    The original article contains 585 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!