Boris and Carrie take a Marbella ‘babymoon’
They head off before second child arrives (so, is good pal Zac letting couple stay at his Spanish villa?)
BORIS Johnson has gone on a foreign holiday for the first time in nearly two years, jetting off to Marbella with his pregnant wife Carrie and their son Wilf.
The Prime Minister is understood to have arrived on Friday and will spend a week’s ‘babymoon’ in a private villa on the Costa del Sol. It will be 17-month-old Wilf’s first trip abroad.
The area in southern Spain is extremely popular with holidaymakers and expat Britons.
Tory peer Zac Goldsmith, a close ally of the Prime Minister and Mrs Johnson, has a sprawling estate in the area with a helipad set in more than 600 acres of woodland.
But critics have attacked Mr Johnson for sunning himself in 24C (75F) heat while the nation grapples with a cost of living crisis and spiralling gas prices.
Labour yesterday called for ‘urgent answers on who exactly is running the show’.
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Bridget Phillipson, tweeted: ‘In the teeth of a crisis of its own making, the Government has put its outof-office on.’
Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell said ‘everybody’s entitled to a break’ but the PM’s holiday ‘underlines the fact he isn’t really focused on the job in the way that he should be’.
Mr Johnson was previously criticised for deciding to head off on holiday in Somerset on August 14 despite a perilous situation in Afghanistan. He was forced to cut short the staycation a day later when Kabul fell to the Taliban.
Mr Johnson is reportedly ‘utterly exhausted’ by the events of recent months, which have seen numerous crises and the loss of his mother Charlotte, 79.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was ‘reasonmay able’ for him to take a foreign break for the first time since his trip to the Caribbean island of Mustique in early January last year.
He told Times Radio: ‘I believe he has gone away. I’m not sure where he’s gone, but what I would say is I am in regular contact with him.
‘He’s also had a year-and-ahalf in which he’s almost lost his life to Covid, his mother passed away very sadly two or three weeks ago and he have decided to take a short break. I think that’s something reasonable.
‘I’m in regular WhatsApp contact with him, I spoke to him only a few days ago. I’m not sure when he’s supposed to have left the country.’
A ‘babymoon’ is a term for a holiday before having life turned upside-down by a new arrival. The PM’s seventh child is due in December.
Mr Johnson’s friend Lord Stanley Fink also owns a luxury estate in La Zagaleta which he has described as ‘the nearest thing to paradise I have ever seen’.
Downing Street did not deny reports Mr Johnson had travelled to Spain. It declined to say whether he was instead working at No10 or in Chequers, as is commonplace.
Mr Campbell told LBC radio: ‘I think you’d be hardpressed to say the country is in a very good state at the moment. There’s half a dozen things the Prime Minister should be gripping.’
‘Nearest thing to paradise’