EVERY Easter, more than two million Brits scramble around for their passports before jetting off for some much-needed downtime abroad.
Joining them this year was Sir Keir Starmer, who soaked up the Spanish sunshine during a four-day getaway with family last week.
According to the Daily Mail, the British prime minister put his feet up at a four-star boutique hotel in Valencia as the world held its breath amid soaring tensions in the Middle East.
Sir Keir and family stayed at the Valentia Cabillers hotel, where a premium room equipped with a kitchenette can set holidaymakers back more than €200 per night.
Located in the heart of Valencia with the city’s iconic cathedral just 50 metres away, Valentia Cabillers describes itself as an ‘elegant boutique hotel’ with a ‘sober and contemporary interior design’.
The hotel offers just 21 suites covering three types of room: superior double, classic suite and premium suite – with the latter providing resplendent views of Carrer dels Cabillers, a side street rich in history that leads to the bustling Placa de la Reina.
It was here where Sir Keir was spotted enjoying a coffee by eagle-eyed tourists, flanked as expected by a team of armed police and bodyguards.
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Back at the hotel, the Labour leader will no doubt have unwinded on the top floor, home to a Sky Bar, rooftop swimming pool and jacuzzi, all topped off with spectacular views of the Valencia skyline and nearby 13th-century cathedral.
But Sir Keir will have had little time to fully relax, with his Easter weekend holiday interrupted by escalating rhetoric from US president Donald Trump over the ongoing war in Iran.
The prime minister was flying back to the UK on a commercial flight on Tuesday evening when Trump threatened to ‘obliterate the entire civilisation’ of Iran and send the country back to the ‘Stone Age’ if the vital maritime trade route of the Strait of Hormuz was not re-opened.
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Sir Keir’s long weekend away at a time of crisis has led to accusations of hypocrisy.
Five years ago, the then-Leader of the Opposition accused Boris Johnson of ‘appalling complacency’ for going on holiday as the US retreated from Afghanistan and the capital Kabul fell back into the hands of the Taliban.
“You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach. I wouldn’t stay on holiday while Kabul was falling,” he told Johnson at the time.
A Downing Street source told the Daily Mail that the prime minister was focused on acting in the national interest throughout the crisis, protecting British people and interests in the region.
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