Editor-At-Large: Dear Tony, I wish you weren't there...

When it comes to holidays, our Prime Minister is almost alone among the leading politicians he respects - they all realised ages ago that to be taken seriously you have to take your vacation in your own country. Kitty Kelley's biography of the Bush family is a cracking good summer read, and in it we soon discover that long before Dubya got the ranch in Texas (where he has been holed-up for weeks picking up bits of wood and driving a tractor while dealing with the deteriorating situation in Iraq), his grandparents decided that Kennebunkport in Maine was to be their summer base, just as the Kennedy family built their compound beside the sea in Hyannis. Silvio Berlusconi has sunk millions into his luxury retreat, complete with secret tunnel and helipad, by the ocean in Sardinia. The new French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has gone so far as to order that all 31 of his ministers only take a two-week break , and that had to be spent in France. Even globe-trotting President Jacques Chirac is spending his hols in the Var region. De Villepin has spent one week in Brittany and another in the south.

To add insult to injury, it has been reported thatBlair is thinking of buying a villa in the gated luxury complex where he's spent the past three weeks. He has never been very imaginative when it comes to holidays - he just doesn't get the PR aspect of it all, taking a freebie with French millionaire (head of a luxury goods conglomerate) Alain Perrin at his chateau in Gascony, another with Berlusconi and several in palaces in Tuscany. I'm surprised he hasn't taken a leaf out of Prince Charles's book and wormed his way on to a cruise on a mega-vulgar yacht - I'm sure Microsoft's Paul Allen, a friend of Peter Mandelson, would oblige. His enormous cruiser Octopus has a two of everything: a couple of submarines, two helicopters and a pair of swimming pools plus a recording studio where Tony could strum to his heart's content, as well as a screening theatre and basketball court.

There's nothing wrong with a short break in the blazing sun to chill out - but three bloody weeks? How many sand castles can you build with little Leo? How many trashy paperbacks does it take to forget Gordon and all his sulks? How many games of Scrabble before you realise the kids are better than you? I've been all around the Caribbean and can honestly say that choosing a fake colonial villa in a brand new complex in Barbados demonstrates you have zero interest in culture, history, local customs and no spirit of adventure. He could have had a far more stimulating and fulfilling time by, say, navigating a barge through the Norfolk Broads, or shrimping off Whitby.

Here's a man always going on about "Britishness" and a shared culture, and yet he's opted for an island where wealthy white people stay in obscenely expensive hotels or villas complexes, surrounded by chain-link fences and security checkpoints, where the locals supply the musical entertainment, make the beds, dispense rum punches or serve at tables. Barbados has none of the exotic charge of Trinidad, the wild beauty of Jamaica, or the unspoilt charm of Tobago or St Vincent. In short, Barbados is nice but dreary, a place where retired tennis players, ageing pop warblers, car dealers and city traders go for a week at Christmas or Easter.

Blair's choice of holiday destination (and don't forget he went there last year, with an election on the horizon) demonstrates is that he has absolutely no sense of pride, curiosity or enthusiasm about his own beautiful country. On the one hand, the Government subsidises the English tourist Board to the tune of millions of pounds trying to persuade the Yanks to return, telling foreigners it's all business as usual post-bombings. The tourism industry is a vital part of the economy, and the lifeblood of rural areas. Over the past few years, obviously goaded into it by advisers, Blair has managed to spend a token couple of days in the Lake District and in Cornwall, but this PM wants sun and mindless fun on any beach but a British one.

Kennedy, Churchill, Reagan, Bush and Co all realised that where you spend your holidays is part and parcel of being in politics. You stay put, riding, sailing, mending fences, painting watercolours, pottering about. All over France people leave the cities in a mass exodus for the simple pleasures of rural life. And, funnily enough, most middle-class families in Britain are spending more and more time doing the same. Blair has two children still living at home - and they want to be entertained. But what's wrong with Devon, Cornwall, Sussex? Why didn't he buy a house in the country instead of a couple of flats in Bristol and an over-priced house off the Edgware Road? Before he buys another property in Barbados (if that is really what he is planning), perhaps he should listen to his pal Bill Clinton, who has been desperate to buy a large house in Oxfordshire. Blair is missing an opportunity to participate in village cricket matches, shop at a farmers' market, attend the carol service at the local church and run the campaign to save the nearest post office. He's spent his time as PM rushing about meeting and greeting and being snapped in photo opportunities, and has expressed very little interest in the delights on his own doorstep. He's never gone for a weekend ramble, explored castles and cathedrals or sat and read the papers on a pebbly beach. It's just baffling. Perhaps his love affair with Barbados reveals a certain shallowness?

I shall be spending this weekend by a beach in Kent, eating locally reared lamb with freshly picked samphire, scoffing local oysters and crab. I'd rather be in Whitstable than sharing a beach towel with Virginia Wade, Michael Winner or Cliff, thanks very much.

The whingeing that Gordon Brown's plans to allow second homes to be funded from personal pension plans from 2006 will remove affordable housing from rural areas, is too late. This has already happened. The Government needs to relax the planning laws so that villages in national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty can build carefully designed homes that blend in with existing housing for locals to rent. At the moment, the supply of council housing has dried up because of over-strict planners and red tape.