Are our politicians getting lazy, or getting wise?

It’s a fair question following Ed Miliband’s interview in the New Statesman the other day. The Labour leader concedes to have gone on holiday this summer without a mobile phone and avoided reading any papers or television news for the duration of his break, describing it a “relief and a liberation”.

Was he being lazy, or being smart in taking a proper break?

Of course the question as far as most voters are concerned is ‘are politicians getting lazier?’ The default position, I fear, of most electors is that their MPs are an idle lot, whose regular claim to be “working in my constituency” during the extended summer recess is just a euphemism for skiving off.

But Ed Miliband is in good company. Eyebrows were raised when it was revealed David Cameron is rather fond of dealing with the pressures of state by “chillaxing,” with one aide admitting his boss spends “a crazy, scary amount of time playing Fruit Ninja on his iPad”.

Whether our politicians are getting slack or just dealing with the pressure cooker lives they lead by switching off properly when they can, they are undoubtedly demanding a better work/life balance these days.

When so called “family-friendly” hours were introduced to the parliament a decade ago it was seen as a sop to women MPs who had suddenly arrived in large numbers in Westminster following Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997.

Last month Tory Louise Mensch blamed the strains on her family for her decision to quit parliament, after infamously walking out of an important hearing of the culture select committee early in order to do the school run. A move excoriated by fellow Tory MP Nadine Dorries:

“This was stomach-turning for female MPs, who act in a professional manner in order not to be judged lacking against our male peers, knowing that hell would freeze over before any male MP would behave in the same way.”

Actually many younger male MPs are nowadays just as likely to pick up the ‘family first’ mantle. Nick Clegg certainly is. He regularly drops his children at school on the way to the office. “Nick kills himself to be able to do it all” says his wife Miriam.

Anyone with young children will sympathise. The palpable sense of missing those key milestones in their children’s lives is fast becoming a price many fathers are refusing to pay, all for the ephemeral glory of a junior ministership.

But where would we be if Winston Churchill took “time out” to relax during the Second World War? And I suspect many voters rather admired Gordon Brown’s ferocious work ethic instead of all this New Man stuff.

Actually, his case perhaps makes the most sense. Why struggle all the way up the greasy poll if you aren’t going to savour every minute when you reach the top job? People who worked with Brown talk of his omnipresence and sheer restlessness, a work/work balance, if you will. Although he only managed three years as prime minister, I’ll bet it exceeds that if sub-divided into actual working hours. Will the same be said of David Cameron, or Ed Miliband?

But as a long-time adviser to Brown, Ed Miliband saw up-close that frenetic energy and gruelling hard work is not always a recipe for success. (Indeed, he uses the same interview to distinguish himself from the Brown Premiership on a number of other fronts too).

So are they slacking or are they just realistic about the need for sane and rational human beings to have better balance – a hinterland as Denis Healey used to call it. And, anyway, aren’t they entitled to take it easy once in a while?

Perhaps the lesson our chilled-out political class should remember is that many people in the real world struggle far harder than they do with their own work/life commitments. Our MPs would perhaps do well to keep quiet about the holidays and family-friendly working arrangements they have that many of their constituents do not.