Analysis: Sunak struggles to change the weather after a shaky first fortnight of campaign
My question is, if the Prime Minister was heckled at a rally and there was no scandal behind it that would give it any significance, should it still be in the news?
I ask this because election campaigns often see isolated, often innocuous events getting sucked into the black hole of political narrative only to be spit out as something entirely different and far more dangerous.
Exhibit A – The tumultuous two days Rishi Sunak experienced after his early departure from the Normandy landings anniversary celebrations.
Such was the scale of the furore that even a road sign in rural Gloucestershire was transformed into a symbol of an ill-fated Conservative election campaign that is suffering one PR disaster after another, simply because it read “Veterans’ Road” and happened to be next to a school the Prime Minister was visiting.
A hellish day for the party came to a climax when Mr Sunak was interrupted at a rally in Wiltshire by a GP unhappy with wider access to healthcare.
Despite the Prime Minister having defended his policies quite persuasively, this was inevitably seen as a further blow to a struggling election campaign.
One wonders whether, if this were to happen to Sir Keir Starmer, the drama might have been diluted by his large lead in the opinion polls and his sophisticated campaign organisation.
None of this is to deny the importance of the D-Day story.
As one pollster put it, the fiasco was “laser-guided” to drive votes to the right and inflict maximum damage on a leader frequently accused of being out of touch with reality.
That was certainly evident in Bishop Auckland on Saturday.
The Conservatives first won the seat in 2019 but speaking just metres away from a Conservative campaign hub, one of their former candidates told Sky News that “I will never vote for that guy” after the events of the past two days.
“He’s trying to push them off a cliff like the rats chasing the piper,” he said.
So how can Rishi Sunak change the weather?
Read Rob’s full analysis below…
