Rishi Sunak’s unlikely bid to remain U.K. prime minister after July 4 appears in tatters after a week bookended by crises: one he thought he’d avoided but the other destined to go down as a historic self-inflicted blunder.
The governing Conservatives were stunned on Monday when Brexit architect Nigel Farage said he would stand as a candidate for his Reform U.K. party in the election. Thinking Farage was out of the picture, Sunak’s Tories had built a campaign strategy to rally the right-wing vote that was tempted by Reform. Days after Farage’s entry, polls suggest Reform is gaining ground — and hurting Sunak’s chances of keeping Labour leader Keir Starmer from power.
Yet even worse was to come. On Friday, Sunak compounded the Tory misery when he was forced to apologize for leaving events in France to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day early. It was a political and diplomatic misstep that Tory campaign officials fear will play into the hands of Farage, who has made a career out of an appeal to British patriotism that harks back to World War II.