The fine art of planning a summer holiday as world leader

Well, that was quick! Both the President of the United States and the UK Prime Minister are due to head back to their desks this week after just one week’s holiday. 

Reasonable people like to think that nobody begrudges hard working leaders a decent break – provided it is not too long, or too flashy, or in a politically sensitive location. The truth is that political leaders often find it difficult get it right when they pick holidays. 

For a start, how long should they go away for? A week seems a bit stingy for Sunak. But annual leave entitlement is much less for everyone in the United States. Two weeks a year plus public holidays are a standard allowance for many. The short duration of Joe Biden’s break on the Delaware Shore is no big deal for American voters. The US Congress is the exception in taking the whole of August off from “the swamp”. At least the President managed to be out of Washington DC for the grim return of his predecessor Donald Trump for his arraignment in the federal court. 

Rishi Sunak’s family holiday is unremarkable too – for an American. Disneyland and ice creams with the children are common holiday activities. The Prime Minister’s difficulty is that even lucky British tourists only go to California a few times in a lifetime. Visits at least twice in 12 months to an Ocean Front penthouse he owns, inevitably remind the British public that he has lived, studied and worked in the US, and until a few years ago held a green card to stay there permanently. 

Having the means to afford such a transatlantic vacation for four also puts the Sunak family into the top fraction of the one per cent. Inevitably Sir Keir Starmer is tempted to stir the politics of envy. Last year, he took a break in Mallorca. A year closer to the election, Labour sources confirm that the leader and his family are holidaying in the UK.

The Sunaks may be rich but he’s still got some way to go in the celebrity stakes. Fellow peddlers at the SoulCycle spin studio in Santa Monica were reportedly disappointed when the VIP visitor they had been screened for turned out to be the Prime Minister and not Taylor Swift.

Since Theodore Roosevelt became the first President to install a telephone at his summer retreat, periods of total escape and rest have been impossible for political leaders. William Hague told me that he had just a single day while foreign secretary when he did not do some work related to the job. In ten years as Prime Minister, Tony Blair said he had none.  

The length of breaks taken is now an issue in Europe, where shut-downs from July to September used to be the norm in ruling class circles. Pointing to the shorter staggered holiday breaks in Germany, President Macron says the summer holiday is too long and leaves children with too much to cram into the school year. He has ordered his ministers to holiday at home if possible and to avoid “distant and exotic locations”. With Gallic pragmatism, two officials have managed to book in a trip to Tahiti, on the grounds that the surfing events in the Paris 2024 will take place there. 

Since the President was bound to end up being un estivant en Provence in any case, the French state has provided an official retreat on a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean Sea. Since Charles de Gaulle, successive presidents have used the Fort de Brégançon in Borme-les-Mimosas commune sparingly. Macron has had a private swimming pool installed and this year will be hosting his wife’s three grown up children, their spouses and seven step-grandchildren.

Joe Biden’s modest vacation was well judged to avoid criticism. He was US senator for Delaware and lives in the state. He often goes to Roheboth Beach where he has a holiday home. In 2021, he was able to break off quickly to return to the White House to deal with the evacuation from Afghanistan, unlike Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. The most the Bidens offered the paparazzi this year was the chance to put Trump’s nickname “Sleepy Joe” in a headline when the president took a snooze on his lounger, while his wife Jill read the Pulitzer winner Demon Copperhead. The couple also went for a moonlit stroll on the sands. So normal.

Like so much else, Trump has turned the norms of holidays on their head. He lives in resorts – whether at his Floridian base of the country club Mar-e-Lago or at the various golf course hotels where he is proprietor – making only occasional forays to places of business such as New York City and the District of Columbia. When he is forced to return briefly to his old haunts such as to Washington last week, he habitually claims that they’ve gone downhill since he left. 

Trump currently faces more than seventy criminal charges, with more likely to follow in Georgia. There is a real possibility that his jet holiday lifestyle could be halted by a sojourn behind bars. Such indictments against a former president are unique for America. Trump likes to see them as a world-beating historical injustice. They are not. He should not take his liberty and ability to take a vacation for granted. A special edition of Foreign Policy points out that since the year 2000, leaders in 53 countries have been indicted, including Chirac and Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi in Italy and Netanyahu in Israel.  In Peru, all three presidential suites specially built at the Barbadillo prison now have occupants. 

Trump most closely parallels Netanyahu is his hope that re-election next year will enable him to derail the wheels of justice. The imprisonment of Imran Khan in Pakistan this weekend will be a reminder that things can go the other way. Even the righteous can find themselves imprisoned by malign regimes as demonstrated by the wicked addition of a further nineteen years to the sentence being served the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. At least a Buddhist religious holiday provided the context for the Burmese military junta to quash five of the trumped-up charges against former leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Not that this amounts to much, because the seventy-eight-year old is serving a twenty-seven year sentence, with more charges pending. 

Perhaps weighing more heavily than the politics, and the impression they give their voters with their holiday choices, is their obligations to family. That surely lies behind Macron’s decision to spend his working holiday with the in-laws. 

Justin Trudeau announced his separation from his wife Sophie Grégoire last week but the estranged couple and their three children are still heading off together on a family vacation. 

Holidays – who needs them? The answer is all of us, especially politicians in the public eye and their families, if they can stay out of jail. They are worth it when you get there. 

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