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Rishi Sunak has issued a humiliating apology after he was accused of a “dereliction of duty” for returning early from D-Day commemorations in France to record an interview attacking Labour’s alleged tax plans.
The episode is highly damaging for the Conservative prime minister, who missed a memorial event on Omaha Beach to return to the UK to repeat his highly contested claim that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 a household.
Labour accused Sunak of a “dereliction of duty”, while Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he had “brought shame” on the office of prime minister.
On Friday Sunak was forced to apologise, writing on X: “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,” he added.
Sunak on Thursday night doubled down on his claims about Labour’s tax plans in an ITV interview, recorded after he left France.
Asked whether he was willing to lie in order to stay in power, Sunak said: “No.” The prime minister characterised Starmer’s claim that he had lied over the £2,000 tax allegation as “pretty desperate stuff”.
The prime minister attended an event at Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy on Thursday but did not attend a later ceremony at Omaha Beach.
Lord David Cameron stood in for Sunak at the ceremony, appearing alongside world leaders including US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Davey said: “One of the greatest privileges of the office of Prime Minister is to be there to honour those who served, yet Rishi Sunak abandoned them on the beaches of Normandy.”
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour shadow cabinet minister, said: “The prime minister skipping off early from D-Day commemorations to record a television interview where he once again lied through his teeth is both an embarrassment and a total dereliction of duty.”
Meanwhile on Thursday the Office for Statistics Regulation criticised Sunak for claiming that Labour would put up taxes by £2,000 per household, without explaining that this was supposedly a cumulative figure spread across four years.
“Without reading the full Conservative party costing document, someone hearing the claim would have no way of knowing that this is an estimate summed together over four years,” the watchdog said.
“We warned against this practice a few days ago, following its use in presenting prospective future increases in defence spending.”
Earlier this week Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler also poured cold water on Sunak’s assertion — made in a fiery television debate with the Labour leader on Tuesday evening — that the number was based on independent analysis of the main opposition party’s plans by civil servants.
Bowler wrote to Darren Jones, Labour’s shadow Treasury chief secretary, to say the figures Sunak used “include costs beyond those provided by the civil service and published online by HM Treasury”.
In the letter dated June 3, he added: “I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service. I have reminded ministers and advisers that this should be the case.”
However, Sunak’s decision to continue repeating the claim appears to echo the playbook used by the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, where heavily contested claims about the supposed financial benefits of leaving the EU were repeated.
Dominic Cummings, who ran the Leave campaign, took the view that provided people were talking about the claims — notably that leaving the EU would release £350mn a week for the NHS — then his message was getting through.
