Rishi Sunak has issued an apology on social media for not staying longer at D-day events in France yesterday.
The prime minister, having left Normandy in order to instead pre-record an election interview with ITV, said “for the commemorations to be overshadowed by politics”.
He posted:
The 80th anniversary of D-day has been a profound moment to honour the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our values, our freedom and our democracy.
This anniversary should be about those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. The last thing I want is for the commemorations to be overshadowed by politics.
I care deeply about veterans and have been honoured to represent the UK at a number of events in Portsmouth and France over the past two days and to meet those who fought so bravely.
After the conclusion of the British event in Normandy, I returned back to the UK. On reflection, it was a mistake not to stay in France longer – and I apologise.
Filters BETA
Hannah Al-Othman is a North of England correspondent for the Guardian
It is a family affair in Hyndburn in Lancashire, where the Tory incumbent Sara Britcliffe is being challenged by her own first cousin.
Matthew Britcliffe is standing for George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain on 4 July. He had joined the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, campaigned for them in the last general election, and cites the late radical Labour MP Tony Benn as his most inspirational political figure.
Sara Britcliffe was elected in 2019; then just 24-years-old, she became the youngest Conservative MP. Labour had previously held the seat since 1992.
Matthew Britcliffe has criticised his cousin for voting in favour of dumping raw sewage in rivers, and voting against a ceasefire in Gaza, and said “the last five years have been horrific, and we simply cannot afford another five years like that.”
“My desire to do the right thing is what has caused me to now stand to represent the constituency of my father’s family,” he said in a statement. “My family has been part of East Lancashire’s history through the age of industrialisation, and I well understand how most of us came to be here in the first place.”
“Days after the [2019] election, my father told me I had a cousin, who I’d never heard of, and that she had been elected to parliament as a Tory MP,” he continued. “It was disappointing news, and didn’t get any better. A vote for dumping more sewage in our rivers, and a vote against a ceasefire in Gaza: two votes of Sara’s which stood out to me.”
Speaking to the Lancashire Telegraph, Sara Britcliffe has said that “Matthew is an estranged family member with whom I have no contact due to personal reasons.”
She said she does not believe that her cousin lives in the constituency, adding: “it is important to note that we do share the same last name and that I will be the second name down on the ballot paper.”
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer has had some combative words over those criticising Rishi Sunak’s early D-day exit, saying “I do find the faux outrage from people who’ve done nothing but make my life difficult trying to improve veterans’ affairs over the years is pretty nauseating.”
PA Media quotes him saying to the Sun that he understood the outrage and that it was a significant mistake. He told the paper:
I get the outrage. It’s a mistake. It’s a significant mistake for which he’s apologised.
But I’m also not going to join the howls of the fake veterans supporters who say he doesn’t treat veterans correctly, because it’s not correct. Obviously it’s a mistake. The prime minister on these visits receives a lot of advice on what he should and shouldn’t be doing.
I’ve spoken to the prime minister this morning and obviously it’s disappointing, but I do find the faux outrage from people who’ve done nothing but make my life difficult trying to improve veterans’ affairs over the years is pretty nauseating, to be frank.
Mercer has represented Plymouth Moor View since 2015, and is standing again at this election.
Matthew Pennycook, the shadow housing minister, was out promoting the Labour policy on the media round this morning. He told viewers of Sky News:
It’s a new policy that will allow first time buyers, through a comprehensive and permanent mortgage guarantee scheme, to get on the housing ladder.
So home ownership for far too many young people is now a pipe dream. We’ve seen rates of home ownership among the young almost half since the 1980s. Now a majority of 20 to 24-year-olds are living at home, people delaying starting families, because they can’t buy their own home. So we need to do something about that. The government’s record on this has been woeful.
The scheme, we think, will help around 80,000 people. People who can afford mortgage payments, but perhaps can’t afford that large deposit they need. Perhaps they haven’t got help from the “bank of mum and dad” to get on the housing ladder. It is part of our comprehensive plan to address the housing crisis, boost economic growth, and unlock opportunity.”
He also spoke about social housing, accusing the government of “the net loss of 14,000 genuinely affordable social rented each and every year.”
He said:
We’ve got to build more of these genuinely affordable social rented homes, as well as take action on the empty and vacant possessions if you like. And that’s exactly what we plan to do.
Senior members of the Labour team are expected to spend much of the day holed up to iron out the party’s draft manifesto ahead of publication expected next week, but for public consumption today they have been promoting their “freedom to buy” housing policy.
As my colleague Jane Croft has written:
Labour has said that, if it wins the general election, it will make permanent a mortgage guarantee scheme aimed at helping low-deposit mortgages become available for first-time buyers.
The temporary scheme, which involves the government acting as a guarantor for part of a home loan, was introduced by the Conservatives in 2021 and was extended until July next year by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. It is aimed at encouraging lenders to offer low-deposit deals to first-time buyers.
Labour believes its plan, which will be rebranded “Freedom to buy”, will help 80,000 young people buy their own homes over the next five years.
Jim Waterson is the Guardian’s political media editor
Sunak’s decision to head home early from D-day could have been explained away by a claim to be working on official business. Unfortunately, his cover was blown after it was revealed he had spent some of the afternoon recording an interview with ITV political journalist Paul Brand.
Extraordinarily, that interview will not be shown in full until next Wednesday night. It was part of a series of pre-recorded ITV interviews with political party leaders that will be broadcast throughout the election campaign – meaning Sunak could have recorded it at any point in the next four days.
On Thursday evening ITV decided to release a short taster clip from the longer interview, in which Sunak was challenged about his tax claims, hoping to attract some coverage ahead of Friday night’s televised debate between party representatives. Instead, the clip mainly served to highlight what Sunak had been up to when he headed back early from Normandy.
Brand, whose reporting helped bring down Boris Johnson during the partygate scandal, told viewers on ITV News: “Today was the slot we were offered … we don’t know why.”
It has often been mooted there should be some kind of role for the Electoral Commission in defining a set of rules around TV debates and interviews during an election campaign to either compel participation, or to avoid the airwaves being flooded. Tonight’s seven-way debate on BBC is the third of ten so far scheduled debates.
The BBC has just now issued a press release detailing a series of interviews that Nick Robinson is carrying out with party leaders. You may recall that Boris Johnson avoiding an interview with Andrew Neil in a similar BBC series of shows became a subplot of the 2019 election.
For this time around, the BBC has announced this schedule:
Monday 10 June at 8pm – Rishi Sunak, Conservatives
Tuesday 11 June at 10.40pm – Nigel Farage, Reform UK
Wednesday 12 June at 7pm (BBC One and BBC One Scotland) – John Swinney, SNP
Wednesday 12 June at 7pm (BBC One Wales) – Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru
Tuesday 18 June at 10.40pm – Adrian Ramsay, Green party of England and Wales
Friday 28 June at 8.30pm – Ed Davey, Liberal Democrats
The BBC says it “has also invited Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour party, to be interviewed by Nick Robinson.”
Euro 2024 fixtures, the split of which was agreed a while ago by BBC and ITV, are also a factor interfering with the election broadcast calendar this year, as presumably nobody wants their slot to go up against an England or a Scotland match. The tournament starts with Germany v Scotland on 14 June.
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent
The row over Douglas Ross apparently elbowing out another candidate who is recovering from serious illness in hospital shows no sign of abating this morning.
As we reported yesterday, the Scottish Tory leader made the surprise announcement that he would be standing for another Westminster seat – having insisted he was focusing on his Holyrood duties as an MSP – and none was more surprised than David Duguid, the anticipated candidate, who had been adopted by the local branch but was then blocked by the party’s management board for health reasons.
Overnight, Duguid’s local supporters have been out in force, condemning his treatment, while opposition voices have variously described Ross’s behaviour as “tawdry”, “shamefull” and “a betrayal”.
This morning Ross gave a lengthy interview to BBC Radio Scotland in which he insisted the management board was concerned “about the rigours of the election campaign and indeed the next five years as a member of parliament”.
Ross denied this was “an insurance option” for his career, and when it was put to him that colleagues at Holyrood were unhappy about his U-turn, Ross said these were “very unique circumstances” and repeated that he “wanted to lead from the front” in a key SNP target seat.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has added to a chorus of disapproval of Rishi Sunak’s actions yesterday, saying it showed “the supreme arrogance of someone who thinks their time matters most and who doesn’t really understand what service means.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Liberal Democrat leader in Scotland, has commented on Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave D-day commemorations in France early. He said:
During elections there are moments in time that don’t just punctuate the campaign, but can define or even end an entire career. Rishi Sunak’s abandonment of the D-day commemorations and the veterans we honour on the beaches of Normandy feels like one such moment.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has also commented, saying “Patriotic people who love their country should not vote for him.”
The big set-piece of the day is the seven-way BBC debate. Andrew Sparrow will be here later on to pick up the blog and cover that for you.
The BBC invited party leaders or “senior figures” to represent the parties at the debate, which is on at 7.30pm for 90 minutes. Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, will represent the Conservative party in the debate tonight. You can imagine, given that she is standing in the fiercely proud port constituency of Portsmouth North, how thrilled she must be at the fact that Rishi Sunak’s D-day flit is sure to come up.
Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, will speak for the official opposition. The Liberal Democrats will be represented by Daisy Cooper, their deputy leader. They will be joined by Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster.
Three party leaders did accept the invite: Carla Denyer, Green party of England and Wales co-leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid Cymru, and Nigel Farage, the freshly installed leader of Reform UK, will make up the seven.
No parties from Northern Ireland are represented.
Mishal Husain is in the chair, and in a somewhat inside baseball* moment this morning she was interviewed on the BBC about the prospect of chairing the debate for the BBC. She was asked how she was going to keep control of a seven-way debate, and rather pointedly suggested that it gives the chance to the politicians appearing to communicate to viewers in ways other than simply in what they say.
[*I suspect putting the phrase inside baseball into the live blog is somewhat inside baseball itself]
Jessica Murray is the Guardian’s Midlands correspondent
The disgraced former Labour MP Keith Vaz has announced he is standing for election in his old seat, Leicester East, for a new local party.
Vaz will be taking on Labour, as well as his successor Claudia Webbe, who is standing as an independent candidate after being expelled from Labour over a conviction for harassment in 2021.
Vaz was the MP for Leicester East for 32 years, from 1987-2019, before he stepped down as a candidate after being caught in a tabloid sting offering to acquire cocaine for sex workers.
In a leaflet distributed to voters in the seat this week, Vaz said: “It was the greatest privilege of my life to serve as MP for Leicester East for over three decades. I absolutely love Leicester.
“Today, I am shocked with what I see. Despite so many opportunities, Leicester is unrecognisable, and on the edge of bankruptcy.
“Many people have urged me to stand again. I have decided to do so and accept the nomination of Leicester’s newest party, One Leicester, to be their candidate for one more term. Although I have always held Labour values, I promise to put Leicester first and party politics second.”
Vaz told the Guardian last year that he would not stand as an MP again, saying: “That ship has sailed.”
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMigAFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2p1bi8wNy9nZW5lcmFsLWVsZWN0aW9uLTIwMjQtYmJjLWRlYmF0ZS11ay1wb2xpdGljcy1saXZlLXJpc2hpLXN1bmFrLWtlaXItc3Rhcm1lctIBgAFodHRwczovL2FtcC50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2p1bi8wNy9nZW5lcmFsLWVsZWN0aW9uLTIwMjQtYmJjLWRlYmF0ZS11ay1wb2xpdGljcy1saXZlLXJpc2hpLXN1bmFrLWtlaXItc3Rhcm1lcg?oc=5
2024-06-07 07:14:00Z
CBMigAFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2p1bi8wNy9nZW5lcmFsLWVsZWN0aW9uLTIwMjQtYmJjLWRlYmF0ZS11ay1wb2xpdGljcy1saXZlLXJpc2hpLXN1bmFrLWtlaXItc3Rhcm1lctIBgAFodHRwczovL2FtcC50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvbGl2ZS8yMDI0L2p1bi8wNy9nZW5lcmFsLWVsZWN0aW9uLTIwMjQtYmJjLWRlYmF0ZS11ay1wb2xpdGljcy1saXZlLXJpc2hpLXN1bmFrLWtlaXItc3Rhcm1lcg
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar