Sunak sorry for D-Day early exit but hits back at critics

Rishi Sunak has accused his critics of politicising D-Day after he was forced to make a grovelling apology for leaving the commemorations early to take part in a TV interview.

- KATE DEVLIN

A Normandy veteran and the former head of the Royal Navy were among those who criticised him for cutting short his visit to France, as the prime minister conceded he had blundered. “It was a mistake and I apologise,” he said. But he later claimed the events should not be politicised and called for the focus to be on veterans when challenged over his D-Day ceremony snub.

Normandy veteran Ken Hay, 98, accused Mr Sunak of letting “the country down”.

Lord West of Spithead, the ex-head of the navy, said it was “stupid” and an “own goal” of the Tory leader to miss the major international ceremony. He said the prime minister’s “advisers should have told him” to stay, adding: “What a cock-up.”

Lord West, who is also a Labour peer, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “I find it very strange that he should do such an own goal. When you’ve got people like the president of the United States, the president of France, [Volodymyr] Zelensky and others all there, and the one person who is not there is the political head of the United Kingdom, I think it comes over very badly.”

And Reform UK leader Nigel Farage seized on the controversy to say Mr Sunak was “not a patriotic leader of the Conservative Party”.