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D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad. 

You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot. 

The word I'd use is "stupid".

It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration. 

I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it.

So you'd hope that someone, somewhere in Team Sunak would have understood the optics of getting an early dart from this holiest of days. You'd have hoped that someone would have understood the toxicity of being perceived to have disrespected the sacrifices of our fallen. 

Because, depressingly, this is the sort of thing that does cut through. That's Britain for you, we'll put up with all manner of public corruption, debasement of law, shit in rivers, ransacking of the countryside, vaulting inequality, rapacious elites and plain old-fashioned fascism, but God help you if you piss about with WWII. Word is it's already coming up on the  doorstep, it's just terrible politics.

Not least because it meant that Starmer got to swan about hanging with Macron and Zelenskyy and look for all the world like the Prime Minister that he's almost certainly going to be in a month's time. It's just thick. They're just so bad at this, either that or they're deliberately trying to lose. 

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