Politicians on holiday never quite look at ease. Relaxing is not what statesmen are supposed to do. That has been part of the sport for photographers ever since early experiments in the holiday photo-opportunity emerged at the start of the 20th century. The sight of Lloyd George digging his garden in Wales must have prompted voters to wonder if he'd ever held a spade before. Tony Blair looks crumpled, but at least he's in summer linen.
The late Roy Jenkins, no slouch where life's little pleasures were involved, once rounded off a majestic survey of prime ministerial vacation habits with a nod of encouragement towards Tony Blair's love of Tuscany, Gascony and Freebie. More notable leaders tend to have more interesting holiday destinations, he observed. "Do we really want to be governed by pygmies in boarding houses in Bognor?"
Summer holidays were easier in the not-so-good old days when everyone knew where they stood. Aristocratic politicians retired to their estates to fish, shoot or idle in August. Harold Macmillan, a Duke's son-in-law and Lord Home (as a 14th earl, the real thing) were still being photographed banging away at grouse to reassure voters that all was right with their world (by then it wasn't) in the 60s. They gave the game away by allowing themselves to be photographed for grainy black-and-white TV, a concession to popular curiosity which would lead to paparazzi snaps within a generation.
There was always a market for holiday photos - Gladstone was pictured felling trees - and politicians (like the royals) have usually obliged, partly hoping to polish their image, partly in the hope of being left alone. But the arrival of 24/7 mass media and intrusive technology, cameras and mics have exponentially raised the game. Ronald Reagan's ranch north of Los Angeles was staked out by cameraman with lenses 18in wide, able to take grainy shots of the president and Nancy Reagan walking or riding from a mountain top across the sweltering valley from several miles away.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, when news photography was barely in its infancy, middle-class politicians went confidently off to the continent - none more so than the Worcestershire iron manufacturer Stanley Baldwin, who would go to genteel Aix-les-Bains in the foothills of the French Alps for a whole month, even when he was prime minister. Gladstone, hero of the Guardian-reading classes, veered (as Guardianistas do) between austerity - chopping down trees or swimming in north Wales - and smart European resorts, from Biarritz to Naples. Some of his hosts were paid off with gongs.
And working-class politicians? Well, there weren't many before a £400 a year salary was finally introduced 100 years ago and they tended to do what the working class did, which was not much holiday at all.
Either way, the public was more deferential then, and generally less censorious too. When Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty before 1914 he used to cruise round Britain inspecting dockyards (yeah, right) in the summer with friends on board the Admiralty yacht, Enchantress, and its 200-strong crew. Sometimes they cruised in the Med. When voters kicked him out in 1945 he was given a villa on the shore of Lake Como (nominally a military HQ) in which to paint for three weeks before moving on to Monte Carlo where he used his immense prestige to negotiate a special £4-a-day rate at the Hotel de Paris. Imagine what the Sun, Mail or Mirror would do with that today! Which is why British and American politicians are in trouble. German leaders do modest (Gerhard Schröder used B&Bs in Italy), French presidents still behave like kings, Italians tend to be Silvio Berlusconi who has many homes.
So what do British leaders do in an era when they don't have old money or old castles? Jim Callaghan retreated to his beloved Sussex farm. Unmarried Ted Heath tried to build up his manly reputation as a yachtsman and sometimes looked a little camp in the process. Margaret Thatcher didn't want to take holidays at all, but they forced her to wind down occasionally. Reluctantly, she stayed with rich friends in Scotland or in Switzerland. The Blairs were more enthusiastic. In her memoirs, Speaking for Myself, Cherie admits that they were "house bandits", freebie-ing their way across Europe.
In the US, meanwhile, voters like to see their leaders as jocks. President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-9) was quick to realise his action-man potential, hiking, fishing, shooting big game. But it gets harder. Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's image masseur, got into trouble for warning Bill and Hillary to stay away from Hollywood and Martha's Vineyard: too elitist for his populist image. Is golf OK if I wear a baseball cap? Can I go fishing providing I don't catch anything? Clinton asked bitterly. But Morris was right to fret. In 2004 John Kerry was photographed snowboarding, skeet-shooting, even wind-surfing, for heaven's sake - and lost the election. George Bush knew that riding on his ranch played better.
As deference waned in the 50s, even the god-like Churchill was not above criticism. In his long old age there was muttering about the rich men whose yachts he deigned to cruise on - Beaverbrook, Onassis and their kind.
So Brown's homespun modesty was bound to be abused. Modern politicians can't win whichever way they play it. Brown cannot be accused of choosing Southwold. I heard him say " I didn't know where I was going until I read it in the papers." That suggests that he trusts his PR savvy wife, Sarah, to take such family decisions. It won't save him from a kicking.
It may be that Brown's best bet for a good summer is that David Cameron comes to grief in his old teenage haunts on the Camel Estuary near Rock. The area has long been famed for the excesses of wealthy teenagers down from London, who run amok on the sand dunes and in the pubs. What if Cameron, who used to be a bit of a hooray Henry himself, got involved in a punch-up trying restore some order? What if it all went wrong and he got arrested?
Dream on in your Southwold deck chair, prime minister.
