Adam Boulton: How Sunak’s California holiday compares with past PMs
Interest rates are up, house prices are down, the small boats are still coming, and NHS doctors are striking.
Labour are still 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the poll of polls.
As he contemplates his political future and the lack of progress on his five pledges, it is understandable that the prime minister might want a summer holiday break from the day job.
Rishi Sunak’s desire to get away can only have increased as he suffers personalised indignities.
Veteran campaigners from Greenpeace have given Just Stop Oil a lesson in how protest can be done, attracting attention without antagonising the public, by draping the Sunaks’ Yorkshire mansion in black.
Greenpeace activists on the roof of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s house
Even the prime minister’s sartorial choices have come under attack with an arrows-point-to-defective-parts scrutiny of his made to measure suits.
“Sunak needs his suits to be nipped in – anything else would drown him,” the style editor of The Daily Telegraph concedes, “but the cropped proportions mean his trouser leg rides up to mid-calf.”
Crisis, what crisis?
Only a few miserable souls will begrudge the prime minister some time off, especially since we are told that he will be back at work, in Blighty, in only a few days.
The modest length of his holiday will not take targets off his back. Prime ministers struggle to hit the right note with their holidays and usually get it wrong.
Is it too flashy? Too boring? Too foreign? Bad for the environment? And who is really paying for it?
These delicate questions explain why Number 10 spokespeople made the mistake of refusing to give details of where the Sunak family were heading.
It was an error because denial will only perk up interest.
Past form shows that newshounds were bound to sniff out the location anyway and would then pap photos more enthusiastically than if they had been served up with a photo opportunity.
David Cameron learnt this lesson the hard way after having his man boobs snapped on a Cornish beach.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha on holiday in Cornwall in 2015
From then on, Cameron holidays began with a posed picture, usually of the beshirted prime minister pointing at dead fish in a market.
It took less than 24 hours for Mr Sunak’s secret destination to be exposed.
The prime minister came clean in a rare extended radio phone-in which came across like a public request for permission to have a break afterwards. Sunak duly pleaded that this holiday is a “special trip”.
“We’re going to California, which is where I met my wife, so it’s very special to us,” he explained to listeners, “but the kids are very excited because I’m taking them to Disneyland”.
It later emerged that the Mickey Mouse visit may be as much for their father as for his daughters Krishna and Anoushka.
“They have sadly grown out of princesses,” the prime minister admitted – but “there’s a new, well not that new anymore, Star Wars bit of Disneyland which I’m very excited about”.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, his wife Akshata Murty and daughters Anoushka and Krishna
Not much to complain about so far. Lots of Brits take their families Disneyward, though most opt for the shorter-haul flights to Disneyworld in Florida rather than Disneyland in California.
Sunak has long advertised his softer side as a Star Wars geek. He collects merchandise from the franchise including a toy lightsabre, and called in the cameras to film his visit to the last blockbuster episode, accompanying his then “boss” Sajid Javid.
A California beach holiday is a lot grander than Cornwall or the walks in the Alps and Snowdonia favoured by Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip.
The Sunaks are trying to muffle extravagance by flying “commercial” rather than indulging the prime minister’s predilection for private jets. That is canny of them – a “PJ” return trip for the family would cost around $300,000 (£235,000).
They’ll be more frugality because they’ll be no hotel or rental costs. The Sunak’s will be staying in the $5m (£3.9m) penthouse apartment they already own on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica.
Though whether it will be big enough to accommodate the prime ministerial entourage, funded by the taxpayer, is another question.
According to Cherie Blair, her husband’s prime ministerial vacations required the presence of “three garden girls (the Downing Street secretaries) to do shifts because he has to have a 24-hour office, the comms people to take in secure lines to the White House and No 10, the detectives who come every day with the red boxes”.
Mr Sunak may get by with a smaller team since he is only expecting “daily updates from his private office”.
The Blairs did not have the wealth of Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy.
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Sunak family stroll along California pier in holiday photos
Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, on holiday in Cumbria in 2002
Cherie admits the family were “house bandits” inviting themselves as guests in other people’s property.
Blair’s image was damaged by the hospitality he accepted from Sir Cliff Richard, the Bee Gee Maurice Gibb, the Bamford JCB dynasty and the Italian aristocrat Prince Girolamo Strozzi, among others.
Having pitched her tent on a campsite in Cornwall, the Labour MP Caroline Flint was surprised to see the then prime minister walking by.
That year, following the foot and mouth outbreak, the Blairs fitted in an unconvincing “holiday at home” away from the sun.
Margaret Thatcher used to impose on a friend as well. She spent several summer breaks away from Number 10 at the Swiss lakeside schloss of Lady Elenore Glover, the widow of a Tory MP.
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By all accounts she did not enjoy her leisure time and packed in as many official trips and visitors as she could.
The surprising exception was when she turned up in Cameron territory on a Cornish beach with a spaniel called Polo on a lead, and her husband Dennis.
It was the day after she had surgery on her hand, and the purpose was to demonstrate that the Iron Lady still had an iron grip under the bandages.
John Major and Gordon Brown did not attract attention with their holidays because they did not amount to much.
Major watched cricket and bought a second home in Norfolk.
A glum looking Brown took off his red tie in Suffolk but rushed back to London at the first news of anything happening.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah walk through Whitlingham Country Park in Trowse in 2008
Like much else during his premiership, Boris Johnson’s holiday diary was chaotic – including Perugia, Greece, Mustique and Margate.
It remains a mystery who picked up the tap for some of his luxury trips with Carrie.
He almost certainly did pay himself for their memorable budget trip to a remote Scottish cottage in 2020 with their new baby. That idyll was cut short when photographers took unauthorised pictures of the couple.
Prime Minister Sunak has not done himself any damage with this year’s family holiday.
He claims not to have had a proper one for four years. Efforts to get away last summer were certainly blighted by his leadership battle with Liz Truss and the death of the Queen.
He has not notched up any points as a man of the people either, with the well-heeled trip to California.
The choice confirms what the world already thought of the couple who met at the elite Stanford University, not far from Disneyland.
No score with the holiday can be seen as a win for this prime minister facing the live possibility that the next general election could free him “to spend more time with the family”, as ministers thrust out of office like to put it.
Otherwise, expressed in the cruder words to errant underlings of an old Sky News boss, “go on holiday permanently, mate!”.
UK
How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk
Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.
Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.
Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”
Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.
After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.
“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.
“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”
Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown. Pic: Robert Mulhern
Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.
Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.
He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”
The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.
Read more:
What happened to the Brink’s-Mat gold?
Kenneth Noye, left, and Stephen Cameron
Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.
“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”
The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.
“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.
“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”
The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.
A Sky News podcast told the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist in 2019
I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.
“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.
He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.
“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.
“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”
He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.
Oasis have reunited on stage for the first time in almost 16 years – with brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher sharing a high five and the briefest of hugs as they closed a performance that for fans was more than worth the wait.
After the split in 2009, for many years Noel said he would never go back – and for a long time, as the brothers exchanged insults through separate interviews (and on social media, for Liam), it seemed pretty unlikely to ever happen.
But now, here they are. As they walked out on stage at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, all eyes were on the Gallaghers for a sense of their relationship – dare we say it, friendship? – now after all these years.
There was no reference to their fall-out or making up, but the gestures were there – lifting hands together as they walked out for the first time.
The headline “OASIS REUNITED” was shown on stage at the gig. Pic: PA
Fans at the Oasis gig. Pic: PA
Headlines and tweets of speculation and then confirmation of the reunion filled the screens as the show started. “This is happening,” said one, repeatedly.
In the end, it was all about the music.
Liam has received criticism in the past for his voice not being what it once was during his solo or Beady Eye performances, but back on stage with his brother tonight he delivered exactly what fans would have hoped for – a raw, steely-eyed performance, snarling vocals, and the swagger that makes him arguably the greatest frontman of his day.
This was Oasis sounding almost as good as they ever have.
Fans sang along and held up their phones to film as Oasis performed. Pic: PA
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Oasis: ‘It’s good to be back’
They opened with Hello, because of course, “it’s good to be back”. And then Acquiesce, and those lyrics: “Because we need each other/ We believe in one another.”
The song is said to be about friendship in the wider sense, rather than their brotherly bond and sibling rivalry, but you can’t help but feel like it means something here.
Over two hours, they played favourite after favourite – including Morning Glory, Some Might Say, Cigarettes & Alcohol, Supersonic and Roll With It.
Liam Gallagher as Oasis takes to the stage in Cardiff. Pic: PA
In the mid-section, Liam takes his break for Noel to sing Talk Tonight, Half The World Away and Little By Little; the tempo slows but there is by no means a lull, with the fans singing all his words back to him.
Liam returns for hits including Stand By Me, Slide Away, Whatever and Live Forever, before sending the crowd wild (or even wilder) with Rock And Roll Star.
Noel Gallagher performing on stage. Pic: PA
An Oasis fan is pointing at the stage during the gig. Pic: PA
When the reunion announcement was made last summer, it quickly became overshadowed by the controversy of dynamic pricing causing prices to rocket. As he has done on X before, Liam addressed the issue on stage with a joke.
“Was it worth the £4,000 you paid for the ticket?” he shouted at one point. “Yeah,” the crowd shouts back; seemingly all is forgiven.
After Rock And Roll Star, the dream that very quickly became a reality for this band, Noel introduced the rest of the group, calling Bonehead a “legend”.
Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs of Oasis. Pic: PA
Liam Gallagher carried a tambourine in his mouth during the concert. Pic: PA
Then he acknowledges all their young fans, some who maybe weren’t even born when they split. “This one is for all the people in their 20s who’ve never seen us before, who’ve kept this shit going,” he says before the encore starts with The Masterplan.
Noel follows with Don’t Look Back In Anger, and the screens fill with Manchester bees in reference to the arena bombing and how the song became the sound of hope and defiance for the city afterwards.
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‘I’d have paid £10,000 to see them’
Two fans sat on their friends’ shoulders as Oasis performed. Pic: PA
During Wonderwall, there’s a nice touch as Liam sings to the crowd: “There are many things I would like to say to you, but I don’t speak Welsh.”
It is at the end of Champagne Supernova, which closes the set, that it happens; Noel puts down his guitar, and they come together for a high-five and a back-slap, a blink-and-you’d miss it hug.
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“Right then, beautiful people, this is it,” Liam had told the crowd as he introduced the song just a few minutes earlier. “Nice one for putting up with us over the years.”
From the roar of the audience, it’s safe to say most people here would agree it’s been worth it.
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