Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 20 August 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

issue 23 August 2008

It is dangerous, almost reckless, for a British Prime Minister to leave the country while in a jam at home. Had Margaret Thatcher not gone to Paris during the Tory leadership contest of 1990, she would probably have found the two extra MPs she needed to survive. Had Callaghan not jetted off for a Caribbean summit in 1979, he wouldn’t have looked so preposterously out of touch when returning to the winter of discontent. So it must have been with the greatest reluctance that Gordon Brown set off on Wednesday for a five-day trip to China.

The Prime Minister dislikes travel at the best of times, so the prospect of the 30-odd hours of flying which his multi-staged trip entails must have been his very idea of hell. If, as is likely, he drops in on Afghanistan, he will be strapped to the side of a Hercules, unable to read or hear anything.

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