Keir Starmer will finally get a holiday this New Year, with No10 confirming the get-away plans just days after the PM’s friends said he ‘badly needs’ one.
Sir Keir and his family will take a short overseas holiday over the New Year, his first holiday since coming to power in July.
The Prime Minister had initially planned on going away in the Summer, however, he was forced to rip up his plans and stay in Britain to deal with the far-right riots.
Speaking this morning, Sir Keir’s spokesman confirmed he will spend Christmas itself at his grace-and-favour mansion Chequers.
They confirmed he will then head abroad “for a few days”, however declined to say where the Starmers will stay.
However in a snub to Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister will not be put in charge for the duration of Sir Keir’s holiday.
The Spokesman clarified that the PM will remain in charge.
Just this weekend it was reported by sources close to the Prime Minister that he “badly needs a holiday”.
Friends added that he is feeling the “relentless strain” of the job, requiring those close to him to provide “a lot of soothing and a lot of buoying up at the moment”.
A friend of Sir Keir told the MailOnline: “He talks a good game about needing to take the unpopular decisions now, and expecting this resistance, but I don’t think he realised quite how unpopular they – or he – would be.”
In September, a frustrated Prime Minister confessed: “It would have been good to have got away over the summer”.
“Whilst the campaign itself was six and a bit weeks, the truth is we’ve been in campaign mode since at least the turn of the year.
“I haven’t had a day off since Rishi stood out there in the rain without his umbrella.
“I also know that this is not a good thing.
“Everybody, including politicians, needs to get away from time to time to have holidays.”
Holidays are perilous affairs for Prime Ministers and senior politicians, as almost any crisis sparks demands for them to cut their stay short and fly back.
Boris Johnson’s holidays were often chaotic, either seeing the PM sunning up in the Caribbean while attention should have been on the pending Covid pandemic, or cutting short a holiday to Scotland after being discovered by the paparazzi.
Dominic Raab was on holiday when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, famously denying he had been swimming at the time because ‘the sea was closed’.
