WHAT is it with Tories and holidays?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab were both on holiday, the latter at a 5-star resort in Crete, when the Taliban started their rush to take over Afghanistan, and at least Johnson didn’t have to travel too far to get home to Downing Street as he was in the south west of England – he even travelled back from Taunton station, according to Somerset Live.
Regular readers will recall that Johnson had to cut short his holiday last year. He was in Applecross when his "secret" location was "leaked" to rebellious nats, or so the Tory press claimed. The National revealed the truth – his presence was detected by a canny local freelance who snapped the family out in public.
READ MORE: Dominic Raab responds to criticism over holiday during Afghanistan crisis
At least Johnson last year wasn’t swanning about while he should have been dealing with affairs of State, though according to Dominic Cummings, no less, a host of top Tories were skiing when Covid-19 broke out. In the PM’s case it might have been water skiing as Johnson was on Mustique in the Caribbean when the virus was first reported to the World Health Organisation.
Johnson’s form for holidays being cut short goes back to his time as London mayor in 2011. The riots that broke out across the city happened when he was on holiday in Canada and he took hefty criticism for taking his time in getting back home.
His predecessor Theresa May was famously on holiday in Wales when she had the not-so-brilliant idea to call the 2017 General Election that ended in a hung parliament.
David Cameron had to cut short holidays to deal with the London riots in 2011, the Libyan crisis the same year (6), the appalling situation in Syria in 2013 and the Isis trouble in Iraq the following year. In March 2016 it was the crisis over Tata Steel and the possible loss of 40,000 jobs which cut short his family break – if only he’d stayed on holiday and cancelled the Brexit vote, how much better off would we have been.
Labour were not immune either. Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown cut short their holidays, the latter to deal with a foot-and-mouth outbreak, and it was a Labour Prime Minister who did the most infamous skulk home of them all.
In early 1979, Jim Callaghan was at a conference – a holiday with the occasional chat – in Gaudeloupe in the Caribbean when all sorts of industrial relations and economic troubles hit the UK during the Winter of Discontent.
Looking suntanned and admitting he had been swimming in the Caribbean, Callaghan flew back saying: "I don't think other people in the world would share the view [that] there is mounting chaos.” A Sun headline writer brilliantly turned that into "Crisis, what crisis?" and Callaghan’s jacket was on the proverbial shoogly from then on.
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