He seemed oblivious to the affront the British people would feel at any sign that such things did not matter to the person at the top.
D-Day in Britain is an anniversary deeply etched in the nation's psyche. An immense source of national pride, it marks the country's role in the liberation of Europe, where thousands of men died and thousands more were wounded fighting for freedom as they stormed the beaches of France against Nazi gunfire.
Gaffe-prone British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visits a school in Stonehouse, England, on Friday.Credit: Getty
Some of the roughly 100 men still alive, in their late 90s or past 100, were at Omaha Beach Thursday to mark the occasion.
Having let his colleagues handle it, Sunak was first attacked on late-night television. On the BBC, Tim Montgomerie, a veteran Conservative journalist, said ruefully: “I want to put my head in my hands. If he did a political interview on the D-Day commemorations again, that's indefensible. It's bad political practice top notch.” It spread like wildfire on social media.
Then he woke up to headlines like now The Daily Mirror shouting: “PM abandons D-day”.
Sunak wanted to explain his decision by emphasizing that he had “participated fully in all British events with British veterans”. And he denied being disrespectful to veterans, urging people to “judge me by my actions when it comes to supporting the armed forces.”
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His problem is that his opponent, Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer, remained in Normandy during the events and was seen speaking to leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Labor accused Sunak of dereliction of duty, while the Liberal Democrats said he had “brought shame” to the prime ministership. Nigel Farage, whose reform party is set to cannibalize the Tory vote, branded the Prime Minister a “total and utter disgrace”.
Johnny Mercer, Sunak's own veterans minister, called it a “significant mistake”, while some Tory MPs compared the incident to Labor leader Gordon Brown's indiscreet 2010 election campaign reference to voter Gillian Duffy as “fanatical woman”.
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The D-Day incident, the worst blunder of the campaign so far, follows a series of embarrassing photo opportunities where Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to announce the snap election and asked football fans Welsh if they were waiting for the European Cup. (for which they have not qualified) and launched his first political ads from a museum of the ill-fated Titanic.
Political campaigners often say that it's what you're not prepared for that hurts you the most in an election campaign.
But how Sunak could invent something so obvious seems incomprehensible. And how he manages to spend the next four weeks is anyone's guess now.
