Rishi Sunak insisted on Monday that he was a fighter not a quitter after the PM was forced into a humiliating apology for returning early from D-Day commemorations in France last week.
Asked about rumours that he might step down before polling day on July 4, the Prime Minister said: “People are gonna say what they’re gonna say. I am very confident in the actions that we’re putting forward for the British people.
“The reality is I’m not going to stop going, I’m not going to stop fighting for people’s votes, I’m not going to stop fighting for the future of our country,” he told reporters in West Sussex.
“I believe in what we are doing deeply. I think our country is at an important moment, we’re at a crossroads, and that’s why I called this election because, having restored economic stability, this is the moment to really think about how we can deliver a more secure future for everyone.”
Asked directly if had considered resigning ahead of the election, he responded: “Of course not”, stressing he is “energised” and finding “enormous amount of support” for the policies he has put forward.
Mr Sunak also pushed back at an attack by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage - condemned by some as dog-whistle racism - that his exit from the D-Day events showed he did not understand British culture or history.
“I can’t speak for him and what he meant by those comments. I’m not going to get involved in that because I don’t think it’s good for our politics, or indeed our country,” the Tory leader said.
“And when it comes to the D-Day events, I spoke about that a lot last week. I absolutely didn’t mean to cause anyone any hurt or upset, and that’s why I apologised unreservedly for the mistake that I made.”
Policing minister Chris Philp said the Conservative leader “regrets deeply not having attended that event”.
“But he's recognised that, he's apologised, and I think we'll see him bouncing around the campaign trail this week,” the minister told Sky News.
“And I'm sure he'll be talking to journalists whenever they want to ask him some questions,” he added, after the Prime Minister largely avoided media scrutiny over the weekend.
After his campaign visit, the BBC was to broadcast a Panorama election special with Mr Sunak submitting to a grilling by Nick Robinson at 8pm.
Asked how he personally felt about what happened in Normandy, when Mr Sunak skipped an event with international leaders to record a campaign interview with ITV, Mr Philp said: “Well, I was surprised and disappointed.
“But he apologised, and I think if you look at his track record, looking after veterans and funding the armed services, he has got a good track record, a track record that he can be proud of, a track record the party can be proud of, and a track record the country can be proud of.”
Mr Sunak’s D-Day decision has been seized upon by Mr Farage but speaking on LBC, Mr Philp said the attack on his leader’s patriotism was “deeply unfair” and “inaccurate”.
However, according to former home secretary Suella Braverman, the hard-right Reform leader is welcome to return to the Conservative Party.
She told The Times that the Tories were a “broad church”, and should not exclude anyone who wants “Conservatives to get elected”.
Mr Philp, however, insisted that a vote for Reform UK amounted to a vote for Labour.
“We believe in lower taxes as well. And the only way to get realistically, to get lower immigration and lower taxes, is to vote Conservative,” he said.
The Home Office minister was promoting a new Conservative campaign pledge to recruit 8,000 more neighbourhood police officers.
He insisted that crime overall was going down, except in London, when pressed on whether people feel safer now than 14 years ago.
But he said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain that “an incident, a knife crime incident, gets sort of magnified across social media in a way that wasn’t the case even five years ago, certainly 10 years ago”.
The £810 million annual cost of the police recruitment drive would be funded by hiking visa fees and removing a discount for foreign students on the NHS health surcharge - although the Tories are also committed to slashing immigration.
For Labour, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper accused the Tories of “yet another empty promise”, stressing they had cut 10,000 neighbourhood police and that 90 per cent of crimes are going unsolved.
