The Spectator’s Notes | 2 August 2008

When David and Samantha Cameron appeared in the newspapers on Monday, photographed on the beach at Harlyn Bay in Cornwall, it was a ‘defining moment’. For the first time in our history, a British political leader has clearly benefited from a holiday snap. Harold Macmillan was pictured on a grouse moor, looking socially divisive. Harold Wilson, in shorts and sandals and with pipe on the Isles of Scilly, did not look like a leader of men. Jeremy Thorpe charged up holiday beaches in a hovercraft, wearing a three-piece suit and a trilby hat (am I making this up?). Mrs Thatcher, also in Cornwall, but in a headscarf, was visibly impatient with the whole business of holidays. I seem to remember a half-naked John Major disconsolately holding a beer can on the Costa del something. Then there was Tony Blair, who certainly seemed to enjoy his holidays, but made the mistake of getting free ones off posh people in foreign countries, and therefore exciting envy.