She blames Gove, and specifically Brexit, for the delay, neatly ignoring the fact that in recent days similar delays have been reported in airports as far afield as Orlando in the US, Toronto in Canada and Sydney in Australia.

Indeed, there have also been delays at airports in Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and Amsterdam. Perhaps France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands all sneaked out of the EU while no one was looking?

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come in for fierce criticism for taking two summer holidays in a month – one to Slovenia and a second in Greece.

How dare he, screamed his critics, with the Labour party claiming Johnson is just enjoying “one big party” in his final days in office.

As so often happens, such sanctimonious carping returned to bite them on the backside when the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, was equally criticised for taking a family holiday in Mallorca amid the cost of living crisis.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown pointedly said: “Crises don’t take holidays”, which was widely seen as a swipe at both his successor as Labour leader and the Prime Minister.

Sir Keir had absolutely the best response when quizzed on this by the BBC on his return to the UK. “I’ve got a very important job as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition”, he said.

“But I’ve also got another job that is important and that is I’m a dad. And I’m not going to apologise for going on holiday with my wife and kids.”

Well said that man. Are we really suggesting that people in very stressful jobs should never take a holiday with their families? Isn’t it clear that people perform their work better when they have had the benefit of a break, politicians included?

A quick look at the history books shows that the issue of Prime Ministers taking holidays has been fraught for many decades.

For example in January 1979, at the height of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ with the country crippled by a wave of strikes, Prime Minister, James ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan, returned from a short holiday in Barbados. Questioned by reporters at Heathrow airport he denied that Britain was gripped by “mounting chaos”.

The resulting front-page headline in the Sun newspaper ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ (words Callaghan never actually said) was widely cited as one of the factors in Labour’s heavy election defeat later that year.

The victor of that election, Margaret Thatcher, famously did not enjoy holidays, seeing them as a distraction from her job of running the country. She once took a 10-day break in Corsica only to return home after four days declaring that she and her husband, Denis, had “done” the island. I imagine she was an exhausting holiday companion.

Her great Conservative rival, Edward Heath, also wasn’t one to relax with a bucket and spade. His spare time was spent skippering his 42-foot racing yacht Morning Cloud, and he actually won the five-day Admiral’s Cup on a break from Number 10 in 1971.

Another Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May, preferred walking holidays in the Swiss Alps with her husband, Philip. It was on one of these treks in 2017 that she made the disastrous decision to call a snap General Election – a gamble that lost her government’s majority and ultimately ended her political ambitions.

Tony Blair was often criticised for enjoying the hospitality of billionaires at their Tuscan palaces, or Sir Cliff Richard’s mansion in Barbados, whereas David Cameron liked “chillaxing” in Cornwall, invariably dressed in the uniform of the posh Chipping Norton set of pale chinos and a dark blue polo shirt.

My small claim to fame is that I once bought a pint for Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who was then my local MP, at the Huyton Labour Club after his General Election victory in 1974. He never bought me one back.

Wilson burnished his man of the people reputation with modest vacations on the Isles of Scilly with his wife, Mary, where he was photographed staring out to sea with his ever-present pipe clenched between his teeth. Most remarkably he was wearing shorts. Prime Ministers have legs. Who knew?

Whatever the holiday choices of our political leaders perhaps we should just cut them a little bit of slack. There will be more important things to criticise them for in what looks like being a very tough winter.

In the words of the famous pop hit by Madonna:

“If we took a holiday,

Took some time to celebrate,

Just one day out of life,

It would be, it would be so nice.”

Everyone is entitled to a holiday, even Boris Johnson - Bill Carmichael