Let Keir Starmer go on holiday – he’s done all he can to help with the riots

...and the prime minister should resist the demands for the recall of parliament too, argues John Rentoul

Keir Starmer works hard and effectively. Let’s give him a break (PA)

Being prime minister is such an intense job that “you have no time to think”, David Cameron said, when he had stopped being prime minister and said he had “too much time to think”.

It is a physically demanding job, too, with the travel and the long hours, and so any sensible leader should make sure they do not burn themselves out.

Unfortunately, I fear that because Keir Starmer was unfairly mocked for saying – towards the end of the election campaign – that he tried to make time for his family on Friday evenings, he may feel that he has to appear to be working all the time.

He may feel that the voters would disapprove if he went on holiday as planned, next week. If so, that would be a mistake. Not that it would be a mistake to think that the voters would disapprove – they disapprove of most things most politicians do, and would be easily, superficially and temporarily satisfied by the empty gesture of staying in London to make some phone calls.

No, it would be a mistake not to take the balanced view and to spend some time with his family, relaxing and possibly even thinking. The riots may be carrying on, very unpleasantly, but the weather forecast is for rain next week – rain being the most effective riot suppressant known to humankind. And Starmer has already taken the decisions he needs to take.

He has chaired a Cobra meeting, which is a form of gesture politics in itself (although Henry Newman, who was a special adviser in the last government, admits that it is a format that helps to focus the response to crises).

Starmer has competent ministers who can deputise for him. Heidi Alexander, the courts minister who was sent out to do the morning media round on Tuesday, has not been a minister before, but she was a deputy mayor of London before her return to parliament and her immediate promotion to the front bench.

What is more, the world wide web has existed for 33 years now. The prime minister, more than most, is like those people with an out of office message saying, “I am on annual leave with only occasional access to email,” who reply within 30 seconds.

And if there is a real emergency, he can always cut his holiday short – another symbolic gesture of limited use, but which is sometimes needed to reassure the public that the prime minister has a “grip”. Boris Johnson, for example, returned from a holiday in Somerset in August 2021 after just a day because the Taliban were advancing on Kabul.

The prime minister needs to strike a balance. Rishi Sunak got the balance wrong from the moment he entered No 10. He said he wouldn’t go to Sharm el-Sheikh for a climate summit because he thought the hours travelling for a photo opportunity and a few snatched meetings were not worth his time. He changed his mind when there was a media outcry. He didn’t learn, though.

The biggest disaster of an error-strewn election campaign was his failure to “waste his time”, as he thought, standing around at the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

If anything, Starmer has learned that lesson too well. He was heckled when he visited Southport after the murder of the three girls at a dance class, and told Tom Baldwin, his biographer: “I get it when people look at a visiting politician and think we do the bare minimum necessary before buggering off again.”

His response was to go again on Friday, without telling the media, so that he could “talk properly” to the broom people who cleared up after the riot and to the emergency services. I am not sure he should have his schedule decided by street hecklers who complain that politicians are out of touch and, when they do visit, that they are not in touch for long enough.

And the one group of people to whom Starmer should certainly not listen are the performing seals calling for a recall of parliament. I do not know what has happened to the Liberal Democrats, as this is usually their job, but this time it was Priti Patel, the underpriced Conservative leadership candidate, who demanded the ultimate pointless gesture – the rolling talking shop of the House of Commons in one of its fits of sanctimony.

You can tell it is a bad idea, because Nigel Farage called for it too. That is Farage, leader of Reform UK, “new kid on the block”, who values parliament so much he has spoken twice in it – not including last week when he was posting inflammatory videos to the internet instead.

Fortunately Starmer is ignoring this bad advice – just as he should ignore the bad advice to cancel his family holiday next week.