All aboard the Gravy Plane

Politicians love private jets but these billionaires’ toys are not all they’re cracked up to be

What is it with Labour's hugely expensive and hypocritical use of private jets? Foreign Secretary David Lammy has a particular liking, racking up £1million since last July. Maybe it's a poor boy-made-good thing; the need to announce his arrival in Success Terminal A after a determined and admirable fight up the ladder from a one-parent family start in Tottenham. 

He is not alone. Keir Starmer has used private flights despite his much-vaunted policies of cutting costs and reducing emissions.  

The Tories were just as bad; the Lettuce spent £500,000 of our money on a flight to Australia when she was at the FO in 2022 and — how about this for irony — James Not-So-Cleverly flew to Kigali less than a year ago to sign the Rwanda deal that never was. A one-day return trip costing us £165,000 when the First Class scheduled fare is as little as £8,000. Little Rishi was very fond of private air travel and with his family billions could have afforded to have footed the bill. But of course he didn't.

The real problem for Labour is that in the public perception it looks far worse; for no logical reason we somehow expect the Tories, the party of the rich and the would-be rich, to be more extravagant. But Labour?

I have flown on private jets a few times and it's not all it's cracked up to be. Three times to Paris with the monster Mohamed Fayed, once with my two daughters, then in their teens, with his flies wide open until he was told. The routine was always the same; collection from home by big fat black Mercedes, arrive at his estate in Oxted three miles away, golf buggy a few hundred yards to his helicopter for the flight to Luton, cross the tarmac to the jet and off to Orly. There a fleet of lookalike Mercs would be lined up beside the jet to take us on a hair-raising drive into the city.

The plus side? Champagne and canapes. The minus? Cramped. And it was Fayed's.

On another occasion I went to Sierra Leone with a mining zillionaire along with the world's fattest fat-cat banker who could barely squeeze into the plane's loo and Bob Geldof who didn't stop talking all the way there, for the three days in Freetown, and all the way back. And our host, because it was his jet, chain-smoked throughout.

There are some plusses. When the mining friend married, he flew 60 of his nearest and dearest from Biggin Hill airport to Romania. All but two of us were assembled in the Biggin departure lounge when the missing couple rang from the M25 to explain that they were delayed by an accident and wouldn't make it. No problem, we will wait.

Similarly, following festivities and waiting at Bucharest airport for our return, we were told we had to move to another part of the building to where the plane was parked. No thanks, an official was told, you bring the plane to us. And it was.

But back to Labour. A rumour comes my way from a usually reliable source. I cannot repeat it here for fear of Cocklecarrot’s blood pressure but it is fruity in the extreme. Did the PM's advisors finally decide that Starmer is so boring that drastic action is required? Well, it's certainly one way to make him seem suddenly interesting?   

*****

As one who dons a green polo shirt and an Ireland rugby scarf to watch my chaps play their dazzling version of the game, I was pleased to hear Martin Johnson, that fine former England and Lions captain, praise the Irish system which brings a small country such success. He told BBC viewers after the Scotland demolition that he had watched the Under-16s at Blackrock College, Dublin's greatest rugby nursery, and "it was like watching an international match."

He is spot on; the independent and grammar schools north and south of the border foster rugby with passion, precision and discipline. My old school in Belfast has won the Schools' Cup more times than any other because of that ethos. It has had a full-time Director of Rugby since the earliest days as well as masters who dedicate their time to the school's many age group teams. It has nine pitches over its 40 acres of playing fields, the First XV goes abroad for warm-weather training and on annual tours against leading schools in England and Scotland.

If good enough, the boys then go into the club and university system and on to the Ulster Province set-up. If they go to Oxbridge or other UK universities their progress is monitored and many return to continue playing. The same goes for schools in Leinster, Munster and Connacht and it works. Unlike the three other home nations it's strictly co-ordinated and breeds success. 

Long may it last. 

*****

On Friday it will be the 50th anniversary of the death of the great PG Wodehouse, the funniest writer who ever lived and who has brought joy to me and your esteemed editor along with countless millions. To mark the event, I asked DeepSeek, that clever blighter Chinese AI thing, to write Plum’s obit in the style of PG and within 10 seconds up came the result. Passages include: ‘It is with a heavy heart, though perhaps a slightly uplifted eyebrow, to report the passing of that chap who writes those dashed funny books.'

And this: 'His prose was a thing of beauty, a symphony of similes and metaphors that danced across the page like Fred Astaire in a particularly sprightly mood. His sentences so perfectly constructed you could almost hear them clicking into place like the jaws of an aunt who has just been informed that her nephew had pawned the family silver to fund a gambling habit. So raise a glass, or if you prefer, a cow creamer. He would have liked that.'

Rather!   

ALAN FRAME

12 February 2025