Rishi poses with family on US holiday after eco-stunt at his mansion
The prime minister has clearly shrugged off a security row at home while he holidays thousands of miles away in California.
Rishi Sunak was pictured with his wife Akshata Murty and their daughters Krishna, 12, and Anoushka, 10, soaking up the sun in the US.
The Conservative Party PM, who has gone away with his family while Parliament is in recess, is spending 10 days on the West Coast including a stop off at Disneyland.
Before he left the UK, Mr Sunak said the trip would be ‘really special’ as it is his first ‘proper’ family summer holiday in years, and his children were ‘very excited’ about their theme park visit.
The MP for Richmond in Yorkshire looked cheerful in the pictures and unfazed by the chaos unfolding on the other side of the North Atlantic Ocean.
His £2 million mansion was covered in hundreds of metres of ‘oily-black fabric’ by Greenpeace activists yesterday in protest of his latest environmental policies.
Mr Sunak announced this week that hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea have been granted by the government in a boost to carbon capture funding.
A picture shared on social media showed four people who had climbed on top of the roof.
They remained there for at least five hours before getting down and being taken away by police vans. Another person has also been arrested.
They have all since been released on bail pending further enquiries.
The stunt has raised questions over how the activists were so easily able to access the prime minister’s home.
Former home secretary Priti Patel said: ‘This raises some very serious questions around how the home of a sitting prime minister has been accessed in this way, to the extent that political campaigners and activists have been able to trespass on his property and physically gain access.
‘There are major security concerns that have to be investigated, and quite frankly the home secretary should be absolutely looking into this as a matter of urgency and raising an immediate review.’
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith added: ‘It’s a pathetic stunt for them to try and do which shows the pathetic, childish, poisonous nature of these organisations.
‘But also how is it that the security doesn’t seem to know how to protect the house of the prime minister – that’s a shocking discovery. There has to be an inquiry into what the hell was going on.’
A statement on Greenpeace’s website read: ‘Rishi Sunak has just said he is going to continue handing out new oil licences and he is on the cusp of approving Rosebank, the largest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea.
‘This will be a climate disaster and will do nothing to lower bills, so we need your help to stop it.
‘We have seen governments make countless u-turns when enough public pressure is put on them.
‘Let’s force Rishi Sunak to pick a side: oil profits or our future?’
But Mr Sunak is likely to deal with the fallout on his return, while he takes the time to enjoy his trip away.
Prime ministerial holiday photo shoots are a long-standing tradition, with David Cameron previously being pictured at a Portuguese fish market, and Theresa May seen hiking in Switzerland.
The PM said the American state of California is ‘very special to us’, as he met his wife there while they were studying at Stanford University.
They continued to live there while he worked for a hedge fund before returning to the UK.
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