Chillaxing is fine. But best to keep it private

In Downing Street, they are nervous to the point of paranoia about the perception that the Prime Minister is a bit too quick to switch off. His favourite iPad game, Fruit Ninja, has been banned in favour of a new government app that lets him follow the progress of policies and data. Boxed sets have been replaced by extra papers for the red box. Wine is being turned back into water for the PM. And the only “date nights” that Mr Cameron is allowed on these days are with Angela Merkel or Christine Lagarde.

The phobia is spreading through the Cabinet. Nick Clegg has to drop his kids surreptitiously at the school gate, having been accused of putting the school run before running the country. George Osborne must go incognito to Klosters and cannot be seen anywhere near a yacht. Ministers are already bracing themselves for austerity holidays this summer, in the knowledge that Cornwall and Cumbria will be more acceptable than the Caribbean or Corfu. Only Ken Clarke, photographed yawning at the cricket last week, is gloriously unaware of the new mantra of “work, work, work”.

The Government should be careful, however, that it does not go too far in the other direction. Of course, it is dangerous for the Prime Minister to “wing it” on policy, to make the clever boy’s mistake of assuming that he does not have to follow the detail. It may have been this tendency that prevented him from spotting the flaws in the NHS reforms. But the most important quality for a political leader to maintain is a sense of perspective. That sometimes means standing back from the day-to-day frenzy of No 10 and keeping sight of the big picture.

Among the bundle of papers that Mr Cameron has been given to read this week is an extract from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s new book, Anti-Fragility. In it, the bestselling author emphasises the importance of differentiating between what he calls “signal” and “noise”. There is so much information in the modern age, he argues, that people make bad decisions because they confuse the general hubbub of life (noise) with the things that really matter (signal). Walking through a forest, “hard-wired” for action, you are more likely to think a rock is a bear than a bear is a rock. Bombarded by data, people tend to overreact to small movements. In his view prime ministers should have two hours of “compulsory chillaxing” every day so they can clear their heads.

A Conservative strategist agrees. “There’s a hysteria about chillaxing,” he says. “But the ability to create space, to turn off the information flow, and think through what really matters, is vitally important for political leaders. We need more perspective and critical distance in the Government not less.”

It’s certainly true that the coalition’s greatest mistakes have been caused by a failure of wisdom, not by a lack of work. The Treasury had spent months slaving away on detailed and costed policies ahead of the Budget. But what was missing was common sense. Had Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron paused and reflected for a moment about whether it was a good idea to fiddle around with taxes on pasties, grannies, charities and caravans, they might not have ended up with a shambolic series of U-turns. It was political misjudgment, not too much Angry Birds, that led them to scrap the 50p top rate of tax.

One Cabinet minister points to Gordon Brown, who was on the treadmill, both literal and metaphorical, by 5am most days when he was Prime Minister, yet lacked a sense of purpose. “You have to stop from time to time otherwise you end up like that,” he says. “These jobs are extremely high-pressure. You need to be able to reset your head. It shouldn’t be regarded as a sign of idleness not being at your desk 24/7.”

There may be a lesson that politicians can learn from the Queen. The home videos released by the Palace for the Jubilee show the young monarch pushing a pram, tickling baby Prince Charles and chasing her family around the garden. We learnt how, on the eve of the Coronation, the Queen came to see the children while they were in the bath, wearing her crown. There were pictures of the young royals buried up to their necks in sand and of the Duke of Edinburgh whizzing down a water slide. This was a family relaxing, off duty and having fun. But what was most striking about the images, of course, was that we had never seen this side of the monarch. The Queen’s public image is entirely about hard work, duty and commitment, which may be why she retains so much respect.

Politicians have taken the opposite approach. They have “chillaxed” — almost ostentatiously — in an attempt to look normal. Mr Cameron talked about his “date nights” with Sam, described his love of the Danish thriller The Killing and agreed to be photographed at a football match with his son because he wanted voters to think he was “just like them”. He hosted a barbecue with Barack Obama in order to pretend that, even when interacting with the leader of the free world, he was an “ordinary kind of guy” who could handle a burger. One senior Tory says: “It’s trying too hard to show that we’re normal that has, ironically, led to us seeming out of touch.”

Now the balance is being redressed. The Prime Minister must be able to relax from time to time. But perhaps, like the Queen, he should keep it a bit more to himself.