Like teachers, MPs get very upset if you tell them their 6 week summer break is a 'holiday'. It's for spending time in the constituency and thinking big policy thoughts. But we can imagine after a busy term of politicking what a ‘well earned break’ might look like:
Politico’s daily newsletter has spotted the likes of Emily Thornburry, Jonny Mercer and Wes Streeting beaching, camping and walking across the picturesque parts of Northumbria, Scotland and the Lake District. They can enjoy the strangely intense weather and then get caught in a long debate about climate change with someone who has recognised them in the pub or campsite toilets.
Dominic Cummings’ favourite means of holiday travel is an inter-reality drive equipped camper van allowing him to visit his favourite dark realms of misery: Mordor, Corroban, Hades and Slough.
Sources close to Boris Johnson say his 2020 holiday to Scotland almost ended in him drowning. According to various newspapers, he appeared to be in distress during a sea swim and his close protection officers had to jump in and rescue him. Floundering and out of his depth, Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019.
Mark Francois was seen at Cambersands constructing a long series of pill boxes in the sand. Tommy helmet on he took up a defensive position and yelled ratatatatat to fire his imaginary machine gun at startled German tourists. Except because of Brexit and Covid they weren't German they were from Nottingham.
[Important public announcement: Mark Francois MP has long been an object of ridicule for this blog for basically acting like he's a member of the Home Guard transported to the 21st century. But this satirical Crow would like to take a moment to appreciate his genuine attempts to hold the government and manufacturers to account on the shocking defence procurement of an armoured vehicle that vibrates so badly it's injuring the troops inside. Ok done normal service may now resume].
So what activities can you do on your UK holiday? Take a metal detector and search for buried treasure? A roman coin, a saxon dagger or a chest load of bad news buried by the government on the last day of parliamentary recess? There’s the scathing report about accommodation for asylum seekers; plans for compensation for Postmasters wrongly convicted of theft and fraud after an IT cock-up and; pay cuts for teachers and police to name a few. Amateur archaeologists may also be needed to sift through the sheer number of skeletons in this government’s closet as another one in the shape of Conservative funding for Boris Johnson’s flat refurb was also revealed.
For his holiday, Dominic Raab has always wanted to go to France but has never realised just quite how close Calais is. He has been warned off a sailing holiday back from Normandy after Priti Patel was seen patrolling the channel with a real machine gun. She is determined that, no matter how desperate their situation, no-one will be able to enter the UK via Kent. Only migrants from Covid-19 hotspots that the government wants a trade deal with will be allowed into the country and they must fly via Heathrow.
Instead Raab was on holiday in Crete. He was trying to enjoy his nice pleasant break when it was quite rudely interrupted by the Taliban taking Kabul. Raab really would have liked to have responded sooner but he was taking in the ancient ruins of Crete and found himself lost in the Labyrinth with no string and no signal. As the Mail reports, he did deputise Lord Goldsmith to call the falling Afghan government. Maybe it was Raab’s geographic prowess that led him to determine that the Minister for the Pacific was the best choice for handling a crisis in a landlocked country in Asia.
Meanwhile, the government is struggling to make its leviathan immigration controls work to help Afghan interpreters who supported UK troops over the last twenty years. This is not a surprise to those who fear that the Home Office is one racist reform away from deporting the fake tanned hordes of Essex for looking ‘too foreign’. Many MPs, particularly military veterans, are fighting the corner of the interpreters trying to evacuate via Kabul airport. Many other Afghans including democrats, women's rights champions and various minorities will be granted a visa but will still have to find a way out of Afghanistan themselves.
As crowds of desperate Afghans congregate in Kabul, crowds of analysts are flocking to the airwaves. Flows of graveyard of empire metaphors have made a sad comeback. First it was just a few tweets about the Soviet Union's failed campaign to a few dozen followers. Then it started to reach PHD supervisors as essays on the British withdrawal from Kabul in 1842 were dusted off. Commentators are now concerned that it is only a matter of time before the resurgence moves on from newspaper cartoons of imperial helmets left on historic battlefields to memes of forlorn looking lions, bears and eagles. In the dark corridors of international policy making, some even believe it is too late and the question of "what China's flawed intervention will look like?" has already been asked. Holidays for MPs are fine but will someone please buy a one way ticket for the metaphors!
