Going on vacation in August if you are the British prime minister carries considerable risk if one pays attention to precedents, and one must be prepared to interrupt or cancel them at the slightest sign of trouble. Keir Starmer – who was a bit unlucky, to be fair – had to give up his plans in 2024, shortly after winning the elections, due to riots across the country sparked by the murder of some girls in Southport, and last year he was forced to cut them short to meet with Donald Trump in Scotland and talk about Ukraine.
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But the vacation curse, largely due to the obsession of the press, has not only spoiled Starmer’s plans. Boris Johnson, who had quite a bold approach to things (see the forbidden parties at Downing Street during the pandemic), suspended a summer stay in the Scottish Highlands for security reasons, after the address of the house he had rented was revealed. And he had similar luck in the summer of 2021 when he was resting in the English county of Somerset and the Taliban decided to advance towards Kabul (his Defense Minister Dominic Raab chose to stay in Crete and had to resign).
Theresa May liked to go on vacation with her husband in a caravan and hike in the mountains of Snowdonia in Wales and the Italian and French Alps. However, the mountain air affected her good judgment, and during one of those August getaways she overthought things and had the terrible idea of calling an early general election to get a clear endorsement of her Brexit plans. It backfired and she lost the absolute majority she had (shortly after Boris Johnson was living with his considerable family in Downing Street).
Thatcher cut short a vacation in Corsica because she had toured the island in four days and said she was bored
Andy Burnham, to minimize the risks of a debacle, is only taking a week of vacation and has not said where, although it is understood to be abroad, and he will continue teleworking and chairing virtual meetings with his ministers (only three months remain until the budget presentation, with probable and unpopular tax increases that will start to create enemies for him).
Even so, the right has gone after him, saying how is it possible that he takes a vacation when he only assumed office on July 20, and with the country “burning” with the arrival of illegal immigrants by boat, the impact of the Ceuta crisis, and “while his compatriots cannot leave home due to the cost of living,” which for many no longer allows even an all-inclusive package at a hotel in Mallorca.
The one who really knew how to do things was Tony Blair, who went on vacation for free and without any remorse to the home of a Labour Party patron in Tuscany, to Cliff Richards’ mansion in Barbados, or to Berlusconi’s Villa Certosa in Sardinia, and he was also lucky that those were quiet Augusts when nothing happened that forced him to return. He really lived well, unlike his successor, the tormented Gordon Brown (Starmer of his time), who two months after becoming prime minister decided to “do the country” by taking his vacation in the United Kingdom, and had to abandon the trip four hours after starting it when an epidemic of fever affecting the sheep flock broke out. The following summer he went to the Suffolk coast, but it is said he hated every minute (he was seen wearing a jacket and tie walking on the beach) and vowed to himself that from then on he would always go to his native Scotland. Which he did.
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Sometimes vacations give terrible ideas, like Theresa May’s early general election call
Rishi Sunak, perhaps knowing he had only a few days left, ignored everything and went to Santa Monica (Los Angeles), where he had his own apartment. David Cameron is another who managed it well. Passionate about Spain and Portugal, he took advantage of his summer breaks to go to Castilla, Lanzarote, Granada, or Madeira, giving the impression of having a great time and not caring about the presence of photographers, although those were different times and, being conservative, the right-wing press treated him with considerable leniency.
Margaret Thatcher took vacations during her long reign in Switzerland and other European spots, but above all she liked to go to Cornwall. Once she and her husband Denis planned ten days in Corsica, but they returned to London after only four, not because of a political crisis but claiming they had already toured the whole island and were bored. In contrast, Labour’s Harold Wilson loved the Scilly Isles so much that he asked to be buried there.
Burnham has gone with his Dutch wife Marie-France and their three children to a secret destination, taking advantage of the political honeymoon he enjoys after announcing several measures to reduce the cost of living (lower taxes on energy and pubs, a cap on bus prices), proving he masters social media much better than Starmer (which is not difficult), and increasing his popularity with a down-to-earth style (he is the first leader in a long time who seems to enjoy his job).
The right-wing press is tearing its hair out because he leaves “in the middle of a migration crisis in Europe”
When he returns, things will get complicated. After all, he has no money to spend, and he has promised nothing less than “to end forty years of failed neoliberalism, centralism, and deindustrialization.” It will do him good to recharge.
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