Why can't we give our prime ministers a break?

New Statesman​

3 days ago

The sun is beating down. The sweaty pack of lobby journalists is ill-dressed for the occasion. Ties loosened. Brows mopped. Suede shoes slowly ruined by the saltwater. They yell questions. One is about the economy. The prime minister crosses one sunburnt leg over another and surveys a patch of blue sky. And so, exactly 60 years ago, the holidaying PM photo opp was born. Harold Wilson reclining in the dunes, a Labour prime minister at leisure, king of his sandcastle and all that he surveyed.
Over the following decades, the most powerful men and women in the land have been forced to subject their most precious moments of peace and relaxation to public scrutiny. When Keir Starmer pulls on his trunks this summer, he will follow in the sandy-toed footsteps of his dozen tired, weary predecessors who could not get a break even when taking a break. He will, though, no doubt relish the chance to travel with his patient wife and two children, getting away from his MPs who have spent the past few weeks wailing: 'Are we nearly there yet?'
On Tuesday 10 August 1965, some 40 reporters stormed the beaches of Samson, an uninhabited collection of dunes and coves about 15 minutes by boat from the main Scilly island of St Mary. And it was here, in-between questions about wages, defence and the prospect of a Labour-Liberal pact, that Wilson became the first prime minister to show his knees in public – and for the benefit of the cameras too – changing forever the idea of our political leaders at rest.
Wilson knew the power of the image that awaited the cameramen and photographers on that beach: father with pipe in hand, wife Mary in a swimsuit handing out cups of tea, son Giles playing with an inflatable dinghy. And the PM's shorts: grey, pulled up high to tuck in an open-necked blue shirt, his sandy, sockless feet in sandals. Wilson himself suggested to the gathering photographers that they might take a 'contemplative shot', and headed off to a rocky outcrop where he could be snapped from all angles, still clutching his pipe. That was the picture he wanted.
One of the photographers then suggested he might take a quick dip. Some light frolicking in the waves. 'I'm not going in,' Wilson insisted, wagging a finger, before casting doubt on his swimming prowess. 'My style is about as good as the local seals.' Even for a prime minister on holiday, style still matters. After that, the press left Wilson alone for the rest of his break. It is an agreement that most prime ministers since have reluctantly entered into: one posed snap and then clear off.
David Cameron is perhaps the finest practitioner of the staged snap. Wear the same outfit: navy polo shirt, navy trousers. Do the same thing: point at fish. Always fish. Fish in Cornwall in 2011, fish in Devon in 2012, fish in a Portuguese market in 2013, and again fish at a different Portuguese fish market in 2014.
'It's almost like he was doing something for the Angling Times,' says Andrew Parsons, who was personal photographer to four Tory PMs. He says the perfect political holiday photo needs to look like someone is relaxing, not on a campaign visit. He has a particular loathing of politicians posing over a cuppa in a café. Too boring, and snappers from local picture agencies will try to catch you out. 'If you're gonna do it, go bold. Don't do it like you're canvassing and walking towards a camera with an ice cream or sunglasses on and sun cream in your hand or whatever. People are allowed a holiday, and when we go on holiday, we all do things that we don't get time to do when we're working. So let's show that visually.'
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Starmer has waited longer than most for a proper summer break. Unlike Wilson, there was no getaway after entering No 10 last year. A planned family break was cancelled when the summer riots erupted. Seven in ten voters said it was the right thing to do, while presumably tutting at the telly: 'Ooh, he looks tired.'
When Starmer did finally get time off with his family in January, he was instantly shamed on TikTok for jumping a three-hour wait for a toboggan ride in Madeira. One person was heard shouting, 'Get to the back of the queue,' as the PM's security detail ushered him and his family to the front. We want our politicians to be just like us, enduring the injustices and inconveniences we all face. But they are not like us: for the most part nobody is going to try to assault, abuse or kill us while we're waiting for a Mr Whippy. No wonder No 10 won't telll me where he is going until after he is back.
For any prime minister looking to make a break for it, there are major considerations to be made about the style, duration and location of a holiday. The Isles of Scilly are perfect: still part of the UK but feel more abroad than home. Failing that, there's Cornwall, where they treat you like you're foreign. Even that can be risky: I once almost ran over David Cameron in a vintage VW camper van. I was trying to navigate a narrow road through Polzeath when a man clutching a boogieboard suddenly stepped out in front of me, and I hit the brakes. Only I seemed to notice that the sun-kissed prime minister was there; everyone else was absorbed in their ice pops.
It was during that same holiday, in 2013, that Cameron was spotted performing the age-old dad routine of awkwardly wriggling his way out of damp swimming shorts with a Mickey Mouse towel tied around his waist to protect his modesty. He also had to cut his Cornish jaunts short because of the terrible phone signal. He once told me that he had to go to the top of the nearest hill to take calls from President Obama.
Cornwall was the location of one of Margaret Thatcher's rare attempts at taking time off. The Iron Lady posed on a beach and played golf with Denis for the benefit of the cameras in 1981. She was no fan of a holiday, though. As education secretary, she went on a ten-day break. On day four she called her private ministerial office: 'Hello dear, we're at Heathrow.' Had something dreadful happened? 'Oh no, dear. We've done Corsica.'
Once prime minister, she was still unable to relax. There is an oft-told (if varying) account of how she went on holiday to Salzburg but became bored and set up a meeting nearby with Helmut Kohl. The German got fed up and cut the chat short, citing illness or a crisis or some other reason to get away from Thatcher. So she took herself off for a walk, only to then see him tucking in to an ice cream, or a double helping of gateaux or a cream cake, depending on the version of the anecdote. On another holiday to Austria, she soon tired of relaxing and took a 90-minute visit to a chipboard factory in Klessheim.
John Major kept his holidays low key, annually heading to the Spanish town of Candeleda. Years later they repaid his loyalty by naming the incongruously named road 'Avenida de John Major'. Tony Blair's jaunts were altogether more showy, relaxing in the gold-tapped villas of tan-tastic celebs such as Cliff Richard, and famously staying as the guest of Silvio Berlusconi, the baddie in a bandana. In 2004, during a five-a-side 'friendly' kickabout, Blair clattered into his host, leaving him hobbling and in need of medical attention.
Gordon Brown's holidays were far less glamorous and not as lengthy. Weeks after becoming PM, he took the family to Dorset in the summer of 2007, only to announce he was returning to Downing Street the next day to deal with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. A year later, he remained defiantly in work mode during a break in Southwold, Suffolk, parading about in a jacket and dark trousers. Friends later claimed that he hated every minute of it. It looked like it.
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Then there are those who, perhaps with hindsight, might wish they had cut the holiday short. In August 2021, Dominic Raab was holidaying in Crete when Kabul fell to the Taliban. As foreign secretary, he angrily dismissed claims that he had been paddleboarding instead of focusing on the crisis as 'nonsense'. He famously explained: 'The sea was actually closed,' suggesting he might have had one eye on the cool blue Greek waters.
Dashing back from a holiday to deal with a crisis is only possible if you know there is a crisis unfolding. 'London was literally burning,' Guto Harri recalls of the summer of 2011, when his boss, London mayor Boris Johnson, was out of the country. 'Terrible riots, looting, flames being projected around the world on TV screens, a major, major crisis. And the mayor – who had been at a desk almost non-stop since being elected – is in the middle of the Canadian Rockies in a sort of glorified camper van with his family, none of whom could actually drive the camper van, and about 300 miles from the nearest airport. So not an ideal situation.' The question of when to cut a trip early is a delicate one. Harri adds: 'On this occasion Boris and Theresa May did a sort of deal: 'If I go back, I'll let you know so that I don't show you up.' And they both agreed to that. But, of course, she rang him from an airport in Switzerland, and an hour and a half later, she was on the ground in London, and Boris was 300 miles from the nearest airport halfway around the world in Canada.'
Sometimes a holiday can be the root cause of a disaster. In April 2017, May checked into the Penmaenuchaf Hall Hotel, Snowdonia. But she was not thinking about relaxing; she was thinking about gambling on a snap election. She lost her majority, and had an even bigger mountain to climb to try to deliver on whatever Brexit means Brexit meant.
Holidays are good. Everyone needs them. In politics, though, they are frowned upon. How dare these people be enjoying a break with their families when I'm not. In part, politicians themselves are to blame: Cameron donned the hairshirt in opposition, promising to cut the cost of politics, before discovering it is quite hard for a cabinet minister to work on the bus. Starmer did it too, berating Sunak's helicopter use before realising that sitting in a traffic jam might not be the best use of time for a prime minister. The public want their politicians to do better, while treating them worse and worse. No perks, just purgatory.
Yet consider this: Blair and Cameron, perhaps No 10's most assiduous holidaymakers this century were also its longest occupants. Cameron was furious when a friend told his biographers, Francis Elliott and James Hanning: 'If there was an Olympic gold medal for 'chillaxing', he would win it. He is capable of switching off in a way that almost no other politician I know of can.'
Might that be preferable to the round-the-clock micro-managing of the Brown administration, early morning emails and late-night messages being fired out on the most obscure issues? None of us make good decisions when we're knackered, and most of us aren't making decisions on war and peace, life and death.
As 'office holders' rather than employees, MPs have no annual leave entitlement. They get paid whether they work 365 days a year or zero. But as one in five now enjoy tiny majorities of under 5 per cent, many will probably feel compelled to spend the summer nursing their constituencies rather than a pina colada.
Timing your break is crucial. The pros make a big show of constituency activity as soon as the Commons rises, then duck out for a fortnight, before returning to another round of local visits before anyone notices they were gone.
Nigel Farage thought it safe to head abroad during parliamentary term-time this May, only to miss one of his biggest Commons opportunities when MPs debated the government's new deal with the EU, while he fired off posts on X, calling it little more than 'a surrender agreement'. It gave Starmer a chance to joke: 'There was no sign of him at the EU statement – he was the first through the e-gates somewhere in the south of France.' The following week, when it actually was half-term, Kemi Badenoch headed to Ibiza, only for Farage to make headlines on being the real opposition. The Tory leader had to interrupt her break to write an op-ed for the Mail from the White Island. (It's not known if she went the full Angela Rayner, who was filmed dancing by TV presenter Denise van Outen in the DJ box at the Hi nightclub while back home the PM was warning of tough times. Van Outen later apologised to 'Angela Raver'.)
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, meanwhile, spends so much time zipwiring, paddleboarding and building sandcastles in his day job that he will be looking forward to a quiet sitdown at home. For years Labour's Jess Phillips boasted about going to 'a Eurocamp in France with 24 other Brummies'. Her boss, Yvette Cooper, once joined her husband, Ed Balls, on a Sound of Music tour of Salzburg wearing lederhosen made from curtain material.
Today's crop of politicians would be wise to learn from Winston Churchill. Holidaying on the French Riviera in 1934, he hurtled down a bright blue water slide on his back, head first, splashing with such ferocity that he lost his trunks. And it was all caught on camera, revealing rather more than his knees.
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