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Unthinkable? Privacy for politicians on holiday Unthinkable? Privacy for politicians on holiday
(2 months later)
Modern politicians assume, probably inevitably, possibly sensibly, that they are never off the record. But shouldn't an exception be made for their summer holidays? There is no public right to know where the Camerons, the Cleggs or the Milibands are heading over the next few weeks – and nor is it a matter of public interest. The assumption that politicians have to release the details of their holidays, or that the media have a right to report them, is not some ancient liberty conceded at swordpoint in 1215. Baldwin could go to Aix-les-Bains, Churchill to Monte Carlo, Attlee to north Wales and John Major to Portugal without their choices necessarily generating a news story. Today's politicians, by contrast, are either badgered into revealing where and how they spend their downtime or, even worse, calculate there may be some advantage in it, a trend Bill Clinton rashly started. It is true that Tony Blair's holiday destinations – the Sharm el-Sheikh date with Mubarak, the Italian count's villa, the snaps with Berlusconi – confirmed his detractors' opinion of him, but they are perhaps best interpreted as proof that he didn't really care what they thought. As Gordon Brown was to discover when he ostentatiously took a holiday in Suffolk that he manifestly loathed in order to burnish his English credentials, ulterior holiday motives never work. It doesn't have to be this way. What politicians need right now, like the rest of us, is a break. So let's allow the Camerons and the rest to do their own thing while we also do ours.Modern politicians assume, probably inevitably, possibly sensibly, that they are never off the record. But shouldn't an exception be made for their summer holidays? There is no public right to know where the Camerons, the Cleggs or the Milibands are heading over the next few weeks – and nor is it a matter of public interest. The assumption that politicians have to release the details of their holidays, or that the media have a right to report them, is not some ancient liberty conceded at swordpoint in 1215. Baldwin could go to Aix-les-Bains, Churchill to Monte Carlo, Attlee to north Wales and John Major to Portugal without their choices necessarily generating a news story. Today's politicians, by contrast, are either badgered into revealing where and how they spend their downtime or, even worse, calculate there may be some advantage in it, a trend Bill Clinton rashly started. It is true that Tony Blair's holiday destinations – the Sharm el-Sheikh date with Mubarak, the Italian count's villa, the snaps with Berlusconi – confirmed his detractors' opinion of him, but they are perhaps best interpreted as proof that he didn't really care what they thought. As Gordon Brown was to discover when he ostentatiously took a holiday in Suffolk that he manifestly loathed in order to burnish his English credentials, ulterior holiday motives never work. It doesn't have to be this way. What politicians need right now, like the rest of us, is a break. So let's allow the Camerons and the rest to do their own thing while we also do ours.
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