Analysis

BORIS JOHNSON’S official country retreat Chequers has been undergoing repairs this week, prompting him to spend much of his time at the Foreign Secretary’s Chevening estate as he works on affairs of state.

And it’s no slight intended to the Prime Minister to suggest that this minor inconvenience is as close as he – or any senior politician – is likely to get in the near future to a personal experience like that of the thousands of people forced from their homes by floods in recent days.

In a quiet Westminster week, his absence from the political fray has been noted by some who suggest the PM should have been visiting flood-hit areas in Yorkshire and the rest of the country.

The truth is that the PM’s absence is a deliberate ploy by Number 10 strategists designed to “de-escalate” the kind of crises that crop up over the course of a year, by not having their man front and centre of them. Mr Johnson’s team are anxious to avoid the mistakes of New Labour under Tony Blair, who never missed a photo opportunity but was frustrated by his lack of progress on policy in his first term as Prime Minister.

With an 80-seat majority and an enfeebled opposition, Mr Johnson will never be in a better position than he is now to make headway on the potentially controversial issues in his in-tray which could define his premiership. So he is less inclined to personally front up the Government response to day-to-day challenges like flooding, even if it means a few days of bad headlines.

Mr Johnson did of course visit the areas of Yorkshire affected by flooding during last year’s General Election campaign, with limited evidence that his visit did anything for the local communities or his own cause.

Yorkshire leaders I spoke to this week agreed that prime ministerial visits have drawbacks and advantages.

The security cover required potentially distracts police and other services from the task at hand, undermining the recovery effort in the immediate aftermath of heavy flooding.

But more important than the personal presence of one man is letting the communities in the grip of a crisis know that Whitehall is working to support local efforts on the ground. Ministers will point to the package of support released this week which will allow homeowners and businesses to apply for up to £5,000 to make their properties more resilient.

But the failure to convene the emergency Cobra committee to get a grip on the crisis, as the Government did after the Yorkshire floods of 2015 and 2019, has led to local leaders describing the Government response as “slow and disjointed”.