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July 28, 2020 - 7:01am
Grant Shapps is an exceptional minister — in fact, he’s unique: the first politician to face criticism not so much for going on holiday, but for coming back.
Not that he has yet — he’s still in Spain. But when he does return he’ll have to go into quarantine. The rules changed after he jetted-off and there’s been much derision over the fact that a minister — the Secretary of State for Transport, no less — got caught out by his own Government’s change of policy.
However, the risk was always there. International efforts to save the tourism industry exist in tension with the need for countries to protect themselves from resurgent pockets of infection elsewhere. Governments can only act on the latest scientific information — and I’m afraid the Spanish branch of the pandemic failed to coordinate its movements with the minister’s private office.
We know that the silly season is upon us when the press tries to ruin our politicians’ holidays. That our leaders occasionally take a break is, it seems, an intolerable affront. Back in January — after months on the campaign trail and of Brexit trench warfare — the Prime Minister withdrew to the Caribbean island of Mustique. There, he was repeatedly accused by the media of “sunning himself” — as if soaking up the rays was an act of grotesque self-indulgence.
Our politicians can’t win. If their holidays can’t be portrayed as outrageously luxurious, then they’re mocked for being boringly pedestrian — literally so in the case Theresa May’s Welsh walking holiday.
And no matter where they go, they’ll be condemned for not being at their desks while some matter of great urgency is taking place back home. It doesn’t really matter what, though. The press will latch on to anything and pretend that the world will end if their chosen victim doesn’t return to work immediately. At the time of Boris’s Caribbean jaunt it was a ‘crisis in the Middle East’ (that we’ve since forgotten about). It was only retrospectively that the PM was accused of being AWOL while the Covid-crisis brewed in China.
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SubscribeIf Shapps had cancelled his trip, he would have been accused of “insider trading”, while letting thousands of the hoi polloi get caught out. Personally, I’d be very happy for him to stay on holiday in Spain … indefinitely.
During a career in Corporate Banking I spent quite a lot of time assessing the creditworthiness of businesses the biggest component of which was the ability of the management. One of the major weaknesses we could identify in a business, one which seriously limited its ability to grow or adapt was over-reliance on, or autocratic rule by, a single individual.
It seems that both these criticisms could be aimed at the current administration (and I do not mean Grant Shapps!).