It was supposed to be a very low
politics affair. You're supposed to see the prime
minister alongside President Biden from the U.S., France, Emmanuel Macron.
He was also, you know, trying to sort of gin up support for EU elections.
And that's a normal, easy photo opportunity.
Look, important, look diplomatic. And yet Rishi Sunak wasn't there.
The Foreign secretary, David Cameron was instead.
And that emerged as people started looking into this, that instead we had
gone back to give an interview to ITV and his wall in sort of identity
politics as this row bubbling over tax and whether she had lied over tax and
and that was all going on in the day to day political scene.
And so this morning, you see big splashes on the papers, the Sun, the
Daily Mail, the Telegraph, all the Express as well, all about serving and
veterans and commemorating it. I don't think any mirror left wing paper
it's the PM wasn't there and it clearly has bubbled up to the point where the
Prime Minister felt it needed to apologise.
Yeah, absolutely. And so
in terms of why he made that decision to come out and do this now obviously with
the election in mind, why might one think about that in terms of the
electoral makeup? I mean, no one was forcing him to do
this. This was a choice.
And the reason to do it is because this issue spiralled further out of control
last night to Montgomery, who was one of the sort of leading conservative
writers, said this was political mishandling of the highest order.
In response to this, she sent word this morning Craig Oliver, whose David
Cameron spin doctor, said this was a huge error.
And so there are people inside the party who are clearly furious.
The Daily Mail is talking to him about military leaders who are furious.
And think about the core audience, it seems like is trying to reach the
moment, especially even on this message about taxes and pensions.
It's older voters, the over 65 who he fears being taken by Nigel Farage's
reform. It's hard to find a more targeted
message to upset them than not being there for D-Day so many ways before
Labour have even launched their housing policy today.
Get out early, put out an apology and try and stop this story.
It tracks before it spins out of control.
That is clearly sort of the messaging coming out of the Prime Minister's
office this morning. The question is, will that actually play
out in sort of the media over the course of today?
Yeah. Will it work?
I mean, and we know that the Labour Party is trying to target its message.
It is trying to show competence, trying to win over voters on those two key
things. Number one, the economy.
Number two, defence. You know, all of the polling shows that
if you if you don't win on those two core ideas, then, you know, as a
political party you can't win. And defence obviously is is to do with
D-Day. And briefly on that, I mean both parties
looked quite very deliberately ecstatic at one of the other big voters to come
out of all this meeting yesterday was Starmer missing Zelensky, the Ukrainian
leader. And so again, it's the Labour leader who
was positioned for the photo op looking prime ministerial and as soon as he
wasn't there, that is why, just in terms of the optics of scenario, the Prime
Minister was doing this this morning.
