Politicians on holiday and why they can't win

PA

I suspect it’s the one thing they don’t teach at politician school. From staying awake during a long speech by your party leader to looking interested when a constituent speaks to you for the third time about their septic tank problem, all the standard stuff will be in the manual. But what happens during recess?

Over the summer politicians are free to relax and enjoy life away from the public gaze. They wish. The reality is that these months simply a provide a different opportunity to put our elected representatives under the glare of public scrutiny.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is on holiday in Scotland right now. Is this really where he wants to be? Given all the problems of the past year I suspect he’d rather be on a sun kissed Mediterranean beach sipping a cold beer, listening to smooth jazz and reading the new John Grisham book but that’s just not an option.

Instead he has to be amongst us, supporting local tourism, putting money into the economy and generally just loving Scotland. Given that we are just 9 months away from Scottish Parliament elections, that is very selfless of him. I suppose his choices were a bit limited. Head to Florida to ride the Thunder Mountain rollercoaster at Disneyworld and he risks looking like he is sucking up to Donald Trump. Going to Tuscany could be interpreted as endorsing Italy’s lurch to the right under Giorgia Meloni. France is nice but President Macron is currently zooming around the Med on a jet ski flexing his biceps and six-pack and inviting comparisons and that is not going to end well.

So Keir is here in Scotland, trying to dodge midges, heavy showers and WASPI women asking difficult questions.

It has always been thus. History suggests that politicians and holidays simply don’t mix. Rishi Sunak was in Ibiza for less than 24 hours when the late Queen Elizabeth II died and he had to fly home. When he was Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab opted to stay on a sunlounger in Greece as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The next month he was demoted.

As Harold McMillan once said, the problem is always ‘events, dear boy, events’.

Then there is the issue of your image on holiday. A Pathe newsreel features footage of McMillan striding around a garden in Ireland on holiday wearing a tweed blazer and tie and matching plus fours. Not very man of the people. It’s even worse in an age where image is everything and everyone has the means of taking a photo at their fingertips. Does John Swinney want to be seen in flip flops?

What length of shorts makes Patrick Harvie look like a statesman rather than a schoolboy? I suspect all these issues could be cleared up by Alex Cole Hamilton who has the air of a man who bought Don Johnson’s entire wardrobe collection when he finished filming Miami Vice and now wears it in the garden at weekends.

Given all this, it might be wise for politicians to simply eschew holidays altogether while in office safe in the knowledge that the sunlit days are in the future when politics is in the past. Boris Johnson is currently on a beach in Greece sipping cocktails and eating crisps and looking like a half inflated bouncy castle and the best thing for him is that nobody cares anymore.