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Grassroots Conservatives say Rishi Sunak’s Normandy blunder has been “exaggerated” and will not lose votes – but reformers might.
The MP and party member for Gosport, a Conservative stronghold with the highest proportion of veterans in England and Wales, said: I They feared they would lose the support of the Reform Party because the Conservatives were proposing the policies voters expected from a prime minister.
Gosport Borough Council’s Conservative leader Graham Burgess said Mr Sunak’s decision to pull out of France early for D-Day commemorations had not impressed local residents, but they had moved on to other concerns.
He said: “The reaction at the time was: ‘How on earth did he do that?’ But I think that was the fault of his advisers, not Rishi.”
“I think he was given bad advice and maybe he forgot because he’s been running around a lot. But I don’t think it was meant to be an insult or disparagement to veterans. I’m a veteran myself.”
But rather than the row over the Normandy senatorial constituency – for which Mr Sunak apologised and described as a “mistake” – Mr Burgess is more concerned that the Reform Party could poach the support of Gosport’s Conservative candidate, Caroline Dinenage, over economic issues.
“They might take some votes away from Caroline but I don’t think they’re going to take enough votes away to put Labour in power,” he said.
Alan Scard, deputy chairman of the local Conservative Association and a city councillor, said constituents he had spoken to were not particularly concerned about Mr Sunak’s decision to cancel early commemorations of the Normandy landings in France.
Still, door-to-door campaigners are trying to avoid mentioning the Prime Minister’s name where possible, focusing instead on touting Dinenage’s achievements in the constituency.
“We’re trying to keep everything locally focused,” he said.[Local politicians] I attended the commemoration of the Normandy landings on Thursday and lit beakers and other things on Thursday evening.
“Local people understand, we are talking to them about who they are going to vote for and it is Caroline Dinen-Age who they are going to vote for. They cannot be against Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer.”
Another Conservative MP, who asked not to be named, said local veterans had “expressed their dismay” at the disaster of the Normandy landings and felt Mr Sunak had “not apologised enough”.
“He should never have done that. It’s bad,” he said, adding that the backlash has been “a bit exaggerated.”
“All I’ve heard is a lot of people saying it was a bad decision. I’ve never heard anyone really say anything strongly bad about him.”
“I’m sure there will be some, but people I know were at the ceremony yesterday and people were just saying, ‘Well, it was a bad decision,’ and nobody was outraged about it,” he said.
“If someone already has a party they vote for, I don’t think their actions will change that.”
The councillor said voters were saying “we’re not voting for the Reform Party” but the Reform Party was offering promises they would expect from the Conservatives.
Voters say the Reform Party’s promised increase to the minimum tax rate is far more attractive than any tax cuts proposed by the Conservatives, which are currently frozen until 2027-28.
Reformers said they would raise standards. Income tax and inheritance taxThe money was raised by the Bank of England abolishing interest payments to banks.
“A lot of people say, ‘Why didn’t you raise the bar? [by the Conservatives]”‘That would have helped a lot more people. That’s what you normally expect from the Conservative party, but they’re not proposing it,'” he said.
2024 Election
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer are campaigning. I‘s general election live blog is the place to go for everything from party manifestos to candidate news and identifying the people who could decide the outcome of the election.
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