So much to do, so little time before it’s the holidays...

CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond, who as today’s Mail reveals is too busy to overhaul Britain’s toxic business rates, still has time to plan his summer holiday.

‘I’m going to France, on the south coast. I’m actually very boring — I go there every year,’ he tells me at The Spectator summer party.

‘I have a theory that holidays are actually the most stressful time of the year.

‘Going somewhere that you already know is the only way of taking a real holiday. I do like going to new places but it isn’t a holiday, it’s work — hard work. Especially if you’ve got kids and a family.’

Hammond, who has two daughters and a son with his wife, Susan Williams-Walker, adds his holiday reading won’t provide much respite.

‘I’m reading Bill Browder’s book, Red Notice, which is about the clash with the Kremlin. I do read fiction, but mostly in the form of Government papers,’ he ‘joked’.