Election latest: Minister defends 'deeply patriotic' Sunak over 'biggest political gaffe in memory' (2024)

The prime minister has faced criticism for leaving the 80th anniversary D-Day commemorationsearly to record a TV interview that's due to go out next week.

Rishi Sunak has since apologised - saying that "on reflection" leaving early "was a mistake",but also that itshouldn'tbepoliticised.

Niall Paterson looks athow damaging thismisstepis for Mr Sunak with Clare Pearsall, former Conservative special adviser at the Home Office,and Joe Twyman, the co-founder of the polling company Deltapoll.

Plus, our chief political correspondent Jon Craig tells us just how big of a political blunder it was.

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The final guest on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips isPaul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

This week, the IFS has said there is a "conspiracy of silence" between Labour and the Conservatives over future tax and spending plans.

Clarifying the comments, Mr Johnson said neither party wants to talk about the "scale of the challenge facing them".

He says they don't want to talk about tax increases because "that frightens voters".

However, given the challenges in areas like healthcare, defence and local authority finances, spending cuts are "implausible", he says.

And yet both parties have committed to getting debt down.

In other words, Trevor says, they are going to have to "find the money from somewhere " so it may have to be "tax rises of some kind".

Mr Johnson says: "Maybe they're just hoping they get lucky".

"I think there are things that I think it's reasonable not to talk about, but I think there are also things where if they've got plans, they should be telling us," he adds.

The IFS has warned both the Tories and Labour their plans lock them into "sharp" spending cuts, with neither "serious about the underlying principle of getting debt falling".

In its assessment of campaigning, the IFS said forecasts suggest whoever is the chancellor in the autumn will be "fortunate" to meet the fiscal rule of getting debt on a downward path between 2028/29 and 2029/30.

That's an aim Labour and the Conservatives have both committed to - something Mr Johnson described as "bizarre".

That's all for this week's episode of Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips.

The leader of the Liberal DemocratsSirEd Davey has said his party is putting forward proposals to ensure the "tough job" of being a carer is "properly rewarded".

He says a £2 hourly pay rise could also help tackle the care worker shortage.

"If you paid this extra money to care workers, I think people would make a choice of not working in supermarkets or Amazon warehouses and things like that because they would feel that the tough job of being a carer would be properly rewarded," he says.

He also says his party's plans aim to look after "the millions of family carers".

The issue is personal to leader Sir Ed Davey, who is a carer for his son John, who has a neurological condition and learning difficulties.

He tells Trevor: "There are millions of people who have similar experiences to me and my family where they are doing a lot of the caring.

"If we support carers who are caring for their loved ones at home, then actually a lot of the caring will be done by families.

"If you are more generous with respite care, with carers' allowance and helping people into work so they can balance caring and working - we have got a full package so yes, it is about paying care workers better and valuing them more.

"It is also [about] looking after the millions of family carers."

Up now on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, SirEd Davey.

Trevor begins by asking whether he has found a "magic money tree" after the Lib Dems announced plans to create 1,000 new hospital beds to end the "corridor crisis" in hospitals.

Mr Davey insists "everything is being fully costed".

He says the Lib Dems are putting healthcare "right at the centre" of their campaign, saying that the NHS is "in a real crisis at the moment and has to be the priority".

He adds that the Lib Dems are "not going to increase personal taxation" when people are "suffering with the costs of living".

"I think even higher taxes is just the wrong thing to do," he says.

He adds the party instead plans to tax "the banks, the social media giants and the oil and gas companies".

The Lib Dems are ramping up their focus on health and social care ahead of its manifesto launch next week, which will include a dedicated chapter on care.

The row over Rishi Sunak's decision to leave D-Day commemorations early rumbles on - with Conservative commentatorTim Montgomerie calling it "the biggest gaffe I can remember in politics".

He says it was bigger than Theresa May's manifesto gaffe - when she was forced into a U-turn over her social care policy dubbed the "dementia tax" - and bigger than the Gillian Duffy gaffe, a hot mic moment in 2010 when Gordon Brown told his advisers the meeting with her was a "disaster" and that she was "just a bigoted woman".

Mr Montgomerie gives his assesment: "The danger now is there's such a loss of confidence in the campaign, such a lack of hope, particularly coming so soon after Farage's U-turn."

Morale in the Tory party is at "rock bottom", he adds.

"Rishi Sunak is not a bad man. He made a massive error. But it's one of those things that I think we will be pondering for years to come as to how it happened."

It won't just define the election campaign, he says: "It will define his premiership."

Shadow justice secretaryShabana Mahmood confirms Labour "won't be raising" income tax, national insurance or VAT, following reports they wouldcast a "triple lock" on the "big three" taxes for five years if they make it into government.

She also insists Labour are "not going to make any unfunded spending commitments".

"We are now all living in the economic reality left by Liz Truss and the Tories when they crashed the economy, which is still having a huge impact on family finances all over the country," she says.

"So our fundamental promise to the British people is we are not going to make promises we can't keep.

"We are not going to put your household finances at risk and every single proposal that we have made is fully funded, fully costed - and that is different from the Conservatives..."

She says the Conservative Party has presented "scattergun proposals put through the Tory desperometer".

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned both the Tories and Labour their plans lock them into "sharp" spending cuts, with neither "serious about the underlying principle of getting debt falling".

In its assessment of campaigning, the IFS said forecasts suggest whoever is the chancellor in the autumn will be "fortunate" to meet the fiscal rule of getting debt on a downward path between 2028/29 and 2029/30.

That's an aim Labour and the Conservatives have both committed to.

Asked about Labour's pledge to increase prison places to tackle overcrowding, Ms Mahmood says: "We are going to deliver the full 20,000 places that this government actually promised."

The party has announced plans to unblock the planning system in order to expand the prison estate and ease capacity.

Up now on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips isShabana Mahmood,shadow justice secretary.

Trevor begins by asking her about Labour's manifesto, which was signed off on Friday.

One of the UK's largest trade unions declined to endorse the manifesto, citing workers' rights and Labour's stance on oil and gas.

Ms Mahmood insists there was a "huge amount of positivity in the room", but confirms the manifesto was ultimately endorsed "by acclaim", rather than a final vote.

"One or two of our trade union colleagues had particular policies that they wanted to push further, but the mood in the room was very much that we were going to remain fiscally credible - make sure everything was fully funded, fully costed, and that's what we did," she says.

Trevor asks whether Labour, which he says is usually a stickler for formalities, opted not to go to a vote due to the dissent in some ranks, pressing her on what the sticking points were.

She replies: "Unite have some areas of policy where they probably would have wanted us to go further, but they did not push any of those issues to a vote, interestingly enough."

The conversation now turns to the Conservative Party's policy announcements on welfare and pensions.

Trevor asks work and pensions secretaryMel Strideabout the triple lock on pensions, saying the Conservatives plan to enhance it by making sure no pensioner pays tax on that.

He asks: "Do you think that's morally right in a country where a child is twice as likely to be in poverty as a pensioner?"

Mr Stride replies that the government has reduced child poverty by 100,000.

He goes on to say: "I think it's absolutely right in a civilised society to protect and support those of an older age.

"They are less likely to be able to change their economic circ*mstances, for example, by going out to work, etc. And it's therefore right that we stand up for our pensioners."

Trevor responds that a child can't go out to earn more money either.

The Conservatives have promised to cut taxes for pensioners by creating a new "age-related" tax-free allowance - dubbed "triple lock plus".

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said the move "demonstrates we are on the side of pensioners", and would bring people "peace of mind and security in retirement".

But Labour's shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth called it "another desperate move from a chaotic Tory party torching any remaining facade of its claims to economic credibility".

Question. If a prime minister is heckled at a rally and there's no backdrop scandal to imbue it with meaning, should it still end up on the news?

I ask because so often in election campaigns, individual and often innocuous events get sucked into the black hole of a political narrative and spat out as something very different and much more dangerous.

Exhibit A - the torrid two days Rishi Sunak has had after his early departure from the D-Day commemorations.

Such was the scale of this saga that even a solitary road sign in rural Gloucestershire was transformed into a symbol of the hapless Tory campaign stumbling from one PR disaster to another - simply because it read "Veterans Way" and happened to be next to a school the prime minister was visiting.

A GP with gripes about the widening of access to medical care topped off the party's hell day after she interrupted Mr Sunak at a rally in Wiltshire.

This was inevitably seen as another blow for the embattled campaign, despite the prime minister giving a fairly convincing defence of his policy.

You wonder how such a situation would have been received had it happened to Sir Keir Starmer - the drama potentially diluted by his huge lead in the polls and polished campaign machine.

None of this is to deny the importance of the D-Day story.

As one pollster put it, the debacle seemed almost "laser guided" to inflict the maximum amount of damage on a leader leaking votes to the right and facing frequent accusations of being out of touch.

That was certainly evident in Bishop Auckland on Saturday.

The Tories took this seat for the first time ever in 2019, but metres from a Conservative campaign stop one former candidate for the party told Sky News he could "never vote for that man" after events of the past two days.

"He's leading them off the cliff like rats following the Pied Piper," he said.

So how can Rishi Sunak change the weather?

Read Rob's full analysis below...

Up first on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips isMel Stride,work and pensions secretary.

The interview opens with the furore over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaving D-Day commemorations early this week.

Mr Sunak later apologised, admitting it was a "mistake", but criticism has been coming in thick and fast.

Mr Stride insists the prime minister is "deeply patriotic" and will be "feeling this very deeply".

Mel Stride says: "He has recognised that he made a mistake, he deeply regrets that, he has apologised unequivocally for that."

Mr Stride does not offer a clear answer as to why Mr Sunak opted to leave the commemorations early, other than to say there were engagements in the diary prior to the election being called.

"I do know Rishi pretty well, in fact I consider him as something of a friend, and I know he is a deeply patriotic person who cares greatly about this country," he says.

"I know he will be feeling this very deeply."

He adds: "His commitment and his patriotism is in my opinion beyond doubt.

"Now that is not the same thing as saying a mistake was not made. He accepts that - he didn't run sway or resile from that situation.

"What he did is he stood up, he put his hands up, he accepted a mistake has been made and he unequivocally apologised."