General Election 2024: Is Rishi Sunak’s D-Day blunder a watershed moment in the race for No10?

Many elections have a stand-out moment or event which define them in the history books.

The question raging at Westminster is whether Rishi Sunak’s decision to fly home early from D-Day 80th anniversary ceremonies in France is one of them.

Political observers have a tendency to overreact to the significance of events.

What may seem huge at 8am in the morning, has sometimes dissipated by the evening.

Some political incidents last days, but then also wane.

A few, not many though, have a lasting impact and can change the course of the to and fro of daily politics.

They include most recently Theresa May’s move to address Britain’s social care crisis, with possibly a much-needed plan, but which turned into a huge row over a “dementia tax”.

Combined with her wooden performance campaigning during the June 2017 snap election, it was seen as costing the Tories their Commons majority.

Gordon Brown’s premiership ended under the cloud of “bigotgate”.

As his campaign in 2010 was struggling it then nosedived when he was recorded describing a voter with whom he had just been speaking as a “bigoted woman”.

His comment about pensioner Gillian Duffy, who he had talked to about immigration and crime on a walkabout in Rochdale, was made inside a car.

But it was made public as he was still wearing a broadcast microphone after returning to the vehicle.

“This is the Gillian Duffy moment,” claimed new Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on Friday afternoon.

Rewinding the political history tape further, the 1992 election is remembered for Neil Kinnock’s rally speech in Sheffield.

Labour was seen to be on course for victory.

But his “we’re all right” or “well all right” triumphalist tone struck the wrong note and is partly blamed for the party’s failure to defeat John Major.

Currently, the polls point to a heavy Tory defeat on July 4.

But the size of this possible defeat is at least still in the balance.

Mr Sunak’s decision to skip the international leaders’ ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day is so far in the 2024 election the most significant moment.

Mr Farage has seized on it and is likely to be trying to making political hay from it in a TV debate on BBC on Friday with Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt, Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and other senior political figures.

It would be no surprise if polls showed a further shift in support from the Tories to Reform after the blunder, though, often it is hard to link specific events to poll changes.

Mr Sunak’s campaign got off to a stumbling start, by announcing the election in the rain, without an umbrella, in Downing Street.

Policy announcements have come relatively fast, as Mr Sunak seeks an election gamechanger, including on a form of national service for young people, and a move to protect pensioners from paying more income tax, a group who may be particularly dismayed by his early return from France.

The Prime Minister was seen to have landed a blow on Sir Keir Starmer with his claim that a Labour government would mean a £2,000 tax hit on households.

The Labour leader, rather surprisingly, seemed unprepared for this line of attack in the ITV head-to-head debate on Tuesday, and failed to rebut it fully.

But Labour turned the spotlight back on the PM by branding him a “liar” over the tax row.

He flew back from France on Thursday and in a TV interview dismissed this claim of telling untruths.

It is the early flight home, rather than staying in France with Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders, which has crystalised into a major electoral moment, possibly the defining one for the 2024 poll.

Of course, though, the latest political wranglings pale into insignificance compared to the events of June 1944, and the bravery of the forces who attacked five Normandy beaches, codename Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, to free Europe from Hitler’s Nazism.