‘As we gather here today, it is not just to honour those who showed such remarkable bravery on that day … it’s to listen to the echoes of their voices, to hear them, because they are summoning us.” So President Joe Biden movingly told the international D-day commemoration ceremony at Omaha beach in Normandy on Thursday. But Rishi Sunak was not there to listen alongside Britain’s wartime allies. Instead, he had departed France after taking part in the British commemoration earlier in the day, returning to the UK to do an election interview with ITV, leaving the foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, to represent Britain in his place.
This will prove to be a defining moment of this general election campaign, because it tells us something fundamental about the man who, having been chosen to lead the country by his party a year and a half ago, is for the first time seeking a mandate from the electorate.
