Editorial: If the PM returns with a plan, it’s a worthwhile holiday
Climbing the greasy pole of politics is fraught with risk; chief among them, the opportunity for the world to go hell in a handcart whilst you’re on holiday. See Raab, Dominic, for one recent example; a mistimed holiday to Crete and the now former Foreign Secretary ends up on the wrong side of a Cabinet reshuffle.
Boris Johnson has taken a different approach, which is to head off on holiday whilst the country appears to be enjoying a rarely-spotted omnicrisis – from energy costs to supply chains to toilet roll shortages (again).
Nobody can say the PM doesn’t know what he’s getting himself in for by jetting off to the Costa del Sol for a week. Labour, unsurprisingly, are having a field day.
But, whilst we recognise it’s unlikely to be the most politically-savvy move on the PM’s part, it is hard to join the criticism. The man nearly died last year, and it is highly unlikely that for his retreat he’s turned his phone off. One imagines he’s doing as much work via whatsapp than he was doing in Downing Street.
If we want a higher quality of politician, we need to stop holding them to ludicrous standards – and while it’s hardly a popular argument right at this precise moment, we should be paying them more, too.
Everybody deserves a holiday… as long as they’ve put a plan in place for their absence.
That is more the problem, it appears. Yesterday’s media round by the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng left firms across the land utterly baffled as to what the government intends to do about the ongoing energy crisis.
The Treasury weighing in immediately afterwards to inform the nation’s media that Kwarteng hadn’t actually produced a proposal hardly inspired confidence, either. Manufacturers will understandably be pulling their hair out – what’s left of it.
Let us hope the PM returns from his break with a spring in his step – and a plan in his pocket.
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