Yahoo News All the Tory gaffes of the 2024 election campaign
Desperate attempts by Rishi Sunak to rescue his party’s chances at the general election fell in vein as the Conservatives were predicted to receive their worst ever result in the official exit poll.
Mr Sunak’s campaign was marred by so many gaffes that Baroness Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, wondered whether a mole had been planted inside CCHQ to sabotage his efforts.
Here, The Telegraph rounds up the latest campaign blunders:
May 22: Rishi Sunak was soaked by a heavy downpour while announcing the general election outside No 10 without an umbrella.
His speech was at times drowned out by the sound of nearby protesters blasting out Things Can Only Get Better, the New Labour anthem.
May 23: In one of his first encounters with voters in the election campaign, the Prime Minister asked workers at a brewery in South Wales whether they were looking forward to “the football” this summer. Unfortunately for him, Wales did not qualify for the European Championships.
May 24: A reporter asked Mr Sunak whether he was captaining a “sinking ship” as he visited Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, who was seen standing alongside Mr Sunak, was seen struggling to contain a smirk.
It was an unfortunate choice of destination as, by that time, 76 Conservative MPs had announced their plans to step down ahead of the general election – Mr Heaton-Harris among them.
May 25: Mr Sunak was mocked online after a digitally edited photograph, showing him standing in front of a supermarket sign reading “moron”, went viral on social media. Thousands shared the edited photograph of Mr Sunak in front of the Morrisons logo.
The charity Full Fact said the edited picture had been taken from a real photo of him holding a loaf of bread, while the people around him had been taken from a similar photo at the same event. These photos were cut together and edited to make it look as though certain letters of the logo were blocked.
May 27: A leaked memo from the Conservative Party’s headquarters, accusing Tory MPs of failing to pull their weight on the campaign trail, was accidentally sent to the wrong address list. The email named and shamed those who were refusing to knock on doors or had taken time off to attend family events.
In response, Mr Sunak said he took personal responsibility for his party’s lacklustre opening to the campaign.
June 3: Sir Keir Starmer’s six election pledges were superimposed on a blank flipchart as attempted Tory mockery in a TikTok video backfired.
June 6: The PM faced backlash after he left a major international ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day early to give a TV interview about his election campaign.
Mr Sunak did attend a British ceremony marking the anniversary on the morning of June 6 but left before an international gathering with other world leaders including Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron later in the day, leaving David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, in his place.
He was accused of “political malpractice of the highest order” by Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie, and was forced to apologise.
June 12: In the ITV interview Mr Sunak filmed after leaving the leaving the D-Day memorial, he was asked about his family’s wealth and whether he has ever had to go without.
He responded to the question by saying he went without “lots of things” as a child, revealing he was forced to miss out on Sky TV.
He said: “There’ll be all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have.
“Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually. But it was lots of things but again, that’s my experience.”
Mr Sunak grew up in Southampton and attended Winchester College, a private boarding school in Hampshire.
June 16: Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary, took inspiration from Mr Sunak’s Tiktok embarrassment and released her own campaign video that saw her strutting with Tory activists.
The 15-second clip shows the former home secretary wearing dark sunglasses, green trousers and swaggering to the soundtrack of DJ Fedde Le Grand’s 2006 hit “Let Me Think About It”.
