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Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Isabel Harbin. I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and former special advisor Salma Shah.

Well, Dominic Raab has had a difficult week following what he clearly hoped was going

to be a relaxing luxury holiday in Crete. Minister's holidays are tricky, aren't they? Because they do

need to get away and have a break, don't they? Yes, they do. I was talking to a cabinet member earlier this week and he was asking me,

look, what's your advice, Fraser? Is it safe to go in holiday right now? Now, this particular

minister's brief is quite quiet, but if you're a minister and you do go in holiday, you're

almost tempting fate. Now, there is, I can't think of a summer in August as a journalist where there hasn't been

some kind of scandal. Some things happen, the ministers in holiday, which can quite easily be

portrayed as the minister doesn't really care if he cared, he'd be breaking his holiday. And I've

always thought this is rather unfair. It's just a way of adding an element of drama. And it also

depends what you expect your government ministers to do.

Now, I think ministers under the British system, they're not intended to be experts. They're

intended to give political guidance on a department of experts. Like the health secretary doesn't

know anything about health, typically. The chancellor tends to know nothing about economics,

not quite the case now with

Rishi Sunniak in power, but they will give political guidance and they will let other people

get on with it. In other words, they oversee the system, but they're not a cog in that system

themselves. So of course they're going to try to get away. Now right now, I would add to that,

that I would, as a citizen, almost demand that those guys go and get in holiday.

Because you want them to be making good quality decisions, which they're not going to be making if they never get a break.

We've had a pandemic where people have not been able to take breaks. A lot is riding on good decisions being made in Whitehall.

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