What’s wrong with Rishi Sunak’s family holiday in California?

Is there anywhere a prime minister can go on holiday without facing criticism asks Sean O’Grady?

Not Skegness: Santa Monica Boulevard is far from Downing Street and Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Rishi Sunak is escaping Britain’s wet and windy washout summer for a holiday at his apartment in Santa Monica, California. He says it will be a “really special” trip after a few years without a “proper” family summer holiday due to Covid and political events. He said his daughters, Krishna and Anoushka, are “very excited” about heading to Disneyland during the trip. Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden will be at the helm and No 10 says Mr Sunak will be getting “daily updates from his private office, particularly on anything that is urgent”.

“We’re going to California, which is where I met my wife, so it’s very special to us, but the kids are very excited because I’m taking them to Disneyland,” he told LBC’s Nick Ferrari.

His press secretary was later asked if Mr Sunak had managed a holiday after last summer’s interminable Tory leadership contest. “He tried to, yes,” said the spokesperson. “He was in a Spanish island for all of about 15 hours, then he came back due to the Queen’s passing.”

What’s wrong with going on holiday in California? It’s only a flat

Though precise details and Hello!-style pictures are hard to come by, we do know that this is a $7m (£5.5m) penthouse apartment which, in the words of the estate agents who handled the sale in 2013, boasts “large private outdoor terraces unlike anything ever seen before on Ocean Avenue” and represents “the epitome of urban Santa Monica beach living” with “stunning views of the Santa Monica mountain”. It’s also in the sixth most expensive area in the US.

You could argue that it isn’t holiday accommodation as such, more of a “home” in the US immigration Green Card sense of the term while 10 Downing Street is merely an office with accommodation attached. This time next year, ex-PM Sunak might have moved here for good to pursue his business interests.

In any case, the prime minister and his wife Akshata will shortly be able to “wake up to the sound of waves crashing against the shore” and enjoy Santa Monica’s muscle beach or the acquaintance of their neighbours Ben Affleck, Reese Witherspoon, Taylor Swift, or Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. The alternative – waking up in rainy London to the sound of Steve Bray yelling ‘‘Stop Brexit’’ and having to rub along with the likes of Lee Anderson, Mark Francois, Steve Barclay and Suella Braverman – does sound less enticing.

So what if the Sunaks are enjoying their riches?

It’s the ‘‘optics’’. During a vicious cost of living crisis, a time when some families cannot afford food, let alone even the cheapest breaks away, it looks out of touch and elitist – painfully so to those who blame you or your party for their predicament.

For Mr Sunak, things are especially tricky because he is by far the wealthiest individual to occupy No 10 in modern times and his relatively privileged upbringing (well-off parents, public school, his old quip about not having any ‘‘working class’’ friends) not to mention his awkward encounters with daily rituals such as paying at a till. Through his family, he’s a billionaire and some sceptics don’t believe he understands the problems most millionaires face, let alone normal folk.

Where are Keir Starmer and the others going?

Mostly, we don’t know yet but Starmer went to Mallorca last year and, half-jokingly, declared that he wasn’t going to apologise for it. Michael Gove declared recently that he was flying off to Greece, whatever the eco-zealots say, and he’s not afraid of a bit of passive smoke from the recent wildfires,

Where should a prime minister go to avoid criticism?

Prime ministers, and indeed politicians generally, can’t win. If they choose a destination that’s perceived as posh and expensive they’re criticised for hypocrisy (one of the most serious of misdemeanours in the media’s penal code) but if they opt for something humble they can be teased – the fate suffered by Margaret Beckett on caravan holidays with her late husband Leo – or accused of ‘‘virtue signalling’’. You can attempt a compromise, as David Cameron once did with a week in Cornwall and then one in Spain, but he wasn’t fooling anyone and got the worst of all worlds.

Who’s paying for it?

For some premiers, this is the trickiest issue of all. If they rely on celebrity friends, as Tony Blair did with Sir Cliff Richard, or party donors, as Boris Johnson used to, they lay themselves wide open to accusations of conflicts of interest, not to mention it being a bit demeaning. One of the many good things about being as loaded as the Sunaks is that they don’t need to scrounge a holiday off a mate. Sunak might have been wiser to enjoy some lavish hospitality with his wife’s family in India, so that he could plead that he’s just visiting the in-laws. Next year, maybe.

What about security?

That’s taken care of by the relevant authorities, and even if the Sunaks had to pay for themselves, like Prince Harry, they can easily afford some heavies to protect their privacy.