Day of Days

Sometimes the noise stops, for even just a few hours, for something important to cast a new perspective on things.

The 80 Year’s D-Day commemorations have been excellent and a privilege to watch. It’s been so essential to hear the stories of bravery and sacrifice of normal people during those era defining days, especially at a time when the idea ‘patriotism’ seems to be about who can bray with the most bravado about ‘the flag’. There’s been no braggado or exceptionalism from the veterans of those historic events, just the remaining sense that they were a part of setting their own future course, and for generations to come.

Real patriotism is a quiet sense of duty, not a Union Jack tattoo on the back of your leg.

I visited the war graves of the Normandy landings with my family around 10 years ago, and I was taken aback at the size and scale of the grave sites of soldiers sitting on top of the green crop of hills overlooking the beaches they fought to gain control of in 1944.

It is such a vivid memory for me, and I hope to go back again. In the village we were staying with my uncle, there is path down to the river from the main village square, and halfway down along a wall there is a bullet hole at around 6ft height. Next to the hole the graffitied inscription: ‘Liberation, 1944’.

Angry Male, Pale and Stale

Through the lens of those heroic D-Day commemorations, the UK election is looking pretty dispiriting - a real comms war of attrition is underway and it is this voter’s will to live that is dying out.?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a man constantly angered that you haven’t thanked him yet, is having the campaign of a comms specialists very worst fever dream nightmares.

This week Sunak resorted to lying about tax calculations during ITV’s live debate on Tuesday night, claiming voting Labour would lead to additional taxes of ￡2,000 for each household.

He repeatedly used a figure he had been advised against using. This has led to a wide range of spokespeople, and actual Conservative candidates in the election, having to defend his stance and double down on the lie on his behalf, while more and more people call them out on it.

This even includes Conservative supporting stalwarts, The Spectator, which used accounting methodology Sunak encouraged to find that Conservative tax plans would actually add ￡3,000 to every household tax bill.

If you’re putting ‘integrity’ as one of your platforms, you can’t spend election cycles defending the lies you have put out in the media.

But after 14 years, if that’s all you’ve got…

Sir Kier Starmer has spent this election like the quiet unassuming uncle at a wedding. He’s having a nice time, catching up with people, but doesn’t want to make a fuss. Well, I get that when defending a 20 point lead you don’t need to find a killer blow, but it would be nice to see someone stand up against the blatant attempts to take an election that should be about how everything needs a fresh set of ideas being dragged into another deranged argument about immigration.?

Quiet competence would be blessed relief in the long run, but right now there’s a need for some stimulants.

This is because end of the pier, nicotine and milkshake-soaked pub bore hack, Nigel Farage, has spotted that the door of the hen-house has been left open, so he’s been given free rein this week to get some Tier 1 media coverage for his Reform Party company. He is standing to be an MP in Clacton on Sea.

Yet again the ire of his campaign is aimed at immigration levels, without ever trying to understand the data and trends, and supply and demand beyond ’this number big and bad’ and ‘this number small and will fix everything’

I suspect Farage has made a mistake in standing as a candidate. Instead of hogging the headlines as a vocal provocateur with his own media platform, he’s now going to have to do some actual work and produce policies that go beyond three word catchphrases and 'all barbers are fronts for crime gangs', which will then be placed under scrutiny. He’s also going to have to back up statements with facts when he is interviewed, and will now compel responses from UK organisations and institutions - the very experts he has little time for.

Construction sector hits back at ‘laughable’ claims?

In that sense I was heartened to see spokespeople from the construction sector refute Farage’s tossed off opinions as soon as he made them this week.

During a feisty ‘how dare you ask me that’ interview on the Today Programme, Farage said “we literally don’t need any” construction workers to come to the UK from abroad, adding that “physical, manual labour” is unskilled and we simply cannot go on with an exploding population the way it is.

The construction sector hit back quickly, as set out by Construction News here, but Finishes and Interiors Sector (FIS) chief executive Iain McIlwee put it the most succinctly:

“Firstly, let’s dispel any myth perpetrated that construction workers are not skilled.

“Our tradespeople are critical to our economic success and frankly the kind of dismissive approach that we heard today is exactly the reason that we do need immigration.“

“We need one in 10 people to join construction, and to have politicians dismissing it as unskilled undermines the work we are doing through schools to attract people into the sector,”?

McIlwee also dismissed Farage’s comments that wages have gone down as “laughable”, saying: “Across the trades we have seen increases of 40 per cent-plus since Brexit.”

More of this pushback in the coming weeks, please!?