No 10: Boris Johnson’s visit to the West is not Boris Johnson’s holiday

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Boris Johnson returned to West Country on Sunday to spend several days with his family, but Downing Street said it was not a holiday and he was “keeping on working”.

Briefing reporters, the prime minister’s official spokesman said Johnson traveled to western England on Sunday, and would return to 10th place on Thursday.

Asked frequently if the short break from Downing Street was a holiday, the spokesperson said it was not. “It’s far from the office,” he said, “but it’s still working.”

The prime minister had previously been criticized for his decision to go on holiday in Somerset on Saturday 14 August, despite the precarious situation in Afghanistan, with the Taliban advancing quickly.

Johnson was forced to cut short this break after only a day, as he was photographed at Taunton Station with his aides on August 15, before presiding over a meeting of the Cobra Emergency Committee in Downing Street later that day.

The foreign minister, Dominic Raab, was also attacked for choosing to go on vacation in Crete, before returning to tackle the crisis.

Pressed on whether Johnson felt free to leave his office once the last British staff were evacuated from Kabul on Sunday, his spokesman said: “I will not go into what dictates the Prime Minister’s diaries.”

He reiterated his insistence that the prime minister had “full confidence” in Raab, who faces questioning before members of the cross-party foreign affairs committee on Wednesday over his role in the Kabul airlift.

Johnson was last seen publicly in a video message recorded in Downing Street and published on Sunday, in which he thanked British forces for their “heroic” efforts in Afghanistan.

The prime minister summoned MPs to Westminster earlier this month to brief them on the evacuation, and faced harsh criticism from senior MPs in his party over intelligence, strategy and planning failures.

Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, challenged him, saying, “Did we think we should just follow us into a booth and pray it’d be alright at night?”

Johnson faces a series of pressing challenges in the coming weeks, including whether to announce plans to raise taxes contrary to the statement to fund the NHS and social care.

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